





^ ^ 



i 












L 



NERVOUSNESS: 

ITS CAUSES, TREATMENT, AND PREVENTION 




AND HEALTH SERIES 

ed by H. Addington Bruce, A.M. 



NERVOUSNESS 



ITS CAUSES, TREATMENT, AND PREVENTION 



BY 



L. E. EMERSON, Ph.D. 

PSYCHOLOGIST, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL 

EXAMINER IN PSTCHOPATHOLOGT 

PSYCHOPATHIC HOSPITAL 

BOSTON 



N ON -REFER ? 




SWVAO • Q3S 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1918 



\ 






Copyright, 1918, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved 



SEP 



Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



V 



©CLA501949 



00 






TO 
Doctor JAMES JACKSON PUTNAM 

Professor Emeritus, Harvard Medical School 
Harvard University 

AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF GRATITUDE FOR CONSTANT 

ENCOURAGEMENT AND HELP IN AN ENDEAVOR 

TO ALLEVIATE HUMAN SUFFERING 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

THIS book is addressed primarily to 
the functionally nervous, but is 
distinctly not a book of conven- 
tional advice to nervous patients. There 
is little in it about diet, rest, exercise, and 
similar commonly approved therapeutic 
measures of a physical sort. Not that 
Doctor Emerson underrates the useful- 
ness of such measures. But he insists, 
and justly in the light of modern medical 
psychology, that the supremely important 
thing for the functionally nervous to ap- 
preciate is the relation that exists between 
their symptoms and their general attitude 
to life. 

"The essence of all functional disturb- 
ances," says Doctor Emerson, "lies in 
the fact that the one who suffers from them 
does so because he is unable to cope with 

vii 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

a given situation, either because he is igno- 
rant, or because he is weak, or because he 
is both weak and ignorant." 

Further, as Doctor Emerson makes clear, 
there is reason for affirming that every 
functional nervous symptom at bottom 
results from, and is a manifestation of, 
disturbing ideas consciously or subcon- 
sciously held by the sufferer. On this 
basis, physical therapeutic measures can 
at best serve only as secondary aids. When 
a lasting cure is sought there must be a 
mental readjustment. The patient needs 
to be enlightened as to the psychic aspect 
of his symptoms, their psychic cause itself 
has to be overcome, and training must 
then follow to insure healthful thinking in 
general. Literally, the patient's mind has 
to be changed before he can be certain of 
remaining nervously well. 

For obvious reasons the process of 
"psychic reeducation" is not always easy. 
Particularly is it difficult when the under- 

viii 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

lying cause of the nervousness — being 
in the nature of subconscious cravings, 
hopes, fears, etc., perhaps harking back 
to the time of earliest childhood — is com- 
pletely concealed from the patient himself. 
Fortunately, medical psychologists now 
possess special techniques for getting at 
these hidden causes of nervous trouble. 
Doctor Emerson has long made use of the 
new devices in his work as psychologist to 
the Massachusetts General Hospital. Some- 
thing of their remarkable possibilities he 
indicates in the present volume, by the 
citation of numerous illustrative cases from 
his clinical experience — cases which as 
detailed by him have the particular merit 
of helping the generality of nervous patients 
to understand themselves better. 

This is throughout the principal aim of 
Doctor Emerson's illuminating little book. 
He would assist the nervous to look into 
the depths of their own souls and know 
themselves for what they really are. Sym- 

ix 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

pathetically, tactfully, but none the less 
emphatically, he tells them in effect: 

"You must stop trying to flee from 
reality. You must learn to face life 
courageously, to control your emotions, 
to react more moderately to the stresses 
and trials of existence. As things stand, 
you are far too self -centered. Stop look- 
ing perpetually inward and begin to look 
outward. Gain self-forgetfulness if you 
would gain health. Draw on the resources 
of religion, love, and work. Develop, in 
short, a wiser philosophy of life. That 
is what you need to make you well and to 
keep you well." 

It is a vigorous, sound, helpful doctrine 
that Doctor Emerson expounds, and to 
which he brings the reinforcement of re- 
sults actually obtained in the treatment 
of nervous insomnia, nervous indigestion, 
nervous dreads, and other functional 
nervous disorders. An attentive reading 
of this book should assuredly help many 



EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 

functional nervous sufferers back to health. 
And, if read by parents, as I hope it will be, 
it should be of still further value in aiding 
in the prevention of nervousness. For if, 
as the facts go to show, functional nervous- 
ness is essentially a product of faulty think- 
ing, the training of children in habits of 
right thinking becomes of far greater im- 
portance than many parents even suspect. 
On this subject of prevention through 
training in childhood, Doctor Emerson is 
happily and explicitly informing. I ear- 
nestly commend his book, therefore, to the 
thoughtful consideration, not only of those 
now so unfortunate as to be afflicted with 
functional nervous troubles, but of all who 
have in any way to do with the upbringing 
of the young. 

H. Addington Bruce. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

LET him who has never been nervous 
lay down this book. It is not 
meant for him, or for her. But 
if everybody else will read it, I shall be 
satisfied. 



Xlll 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Editorial Introduction . . vii 

Prefatory Note . . . xiii 
I. Some Organic Causes of Nervous 

Symptoms 1 

II. Functional Nervous Disorders . 14 

III. Dreams, Reality, and Nervous Dis- 

organization .... 30 

IV. The Divided Soul .... 52 
V. Hidden Equivalents in Nervous- 
ness 76 

VI. Treatment : Analysis ; Moral Edu- 
cation; Personal and Social 

Organization .... 98 

VII. Prevention: Childhood; Marriage 125 
VIII. Vision; Religion; Philosophy; 

Morality 158 

Index 183 



xv 



NERVOUSNESS 

Chapter I 
Some Organic Causes of Nervous Symptoms 

MOST nervous patients, it should be 
said at the outset, are suffering 
from functional rather than or- 
ganic disorders. That is to say, their mala- 
dies are essentially curable, and curable 
by other than strictly medicinal means. 
But it is important to recognize that or- 
ganic conditions are primarily responsible 
for nervous symptoms in not a few cases. 
For this reason every nervous patient 
should have a differential diagnosis made, 
to determine whether his nervousness is 
functional or organic; and, if organic, to 
determine what its specific cause is, so that 

1 



NERVOUSNESS 

appropriate treatment may be begun with- 
out delay. 

Do not think you can tell, all by your- 
self, the difference between organic and 
functional disorders. It is a very difficult 
thing to do, and sometimes the greatest 
expert in differential diagnosis can make 
the distinction only after long observation. 
Therefore the thing to do in any case that 
seems more than passing serious, is to con- 
sult with some physician or go to some 
hospital. 

For instance, sometimes the first signs 
by which tuberculosis shows itself are nerv- 
ous symptoms. It is only common sense 
to have oneself examined if tuberculosis 
is at all suspected, to see whether or not 
one has this disease. For if one does have 
it and knows it soon enough and takes the 
right treatment, he may be entirely cured. 
But if he does not know it and treatment 
is long postponed, the chances of recovery 
are made very small. Nervousness in such 

2 



ORGANIC CAUSES OF NERVOUS SYMPTOMS 

a case, of course, is of secondary im- 
portance, except as a symptom of organic 
disease. 

And tuberculosis is only one of several 
serious diseases which may provoke symp- 
toms similar to those of functional nervous 
disorders. As Doctor Richard Cabot has 
pointed out, "A man with heart disease, 
tuberculosis, peritonitis, cancer, arterio- 
sclerosis, brain syphilis, may present the 
same symptoms as the neurasthenic." x 
And, more elaborately, in his recently pub- 
lished book on "Health and Disease", 
Doctor Roger I. Lee, Professor of Hygiene 
in Harvard University, says : 

"In considering the nervous system it 
is important to realize that the same food 
which nourishes the muscles also nourishes 
the brain and nervous system. . . . The 
nervous and mental systems are poisoned 
in the same way as any other system in 
the body is poisoned. Like the other 

1 " A Layman's Handbook of Medicine ", p. 222. 



NERVOUSNESS 

organs, the nerves and brain share in gen- 
eral poisonings and, likewise, are peculiarly- 
susceptible to certain poisons. We see 
them, for example, becoming abnormal 
and poisoned in many of the contagious 
diseases. We have the temporary delirium 
in the course of typhoid fever, for instance, 
and also in the course of many other fevers. 
We are all familiar with the fact that a per- 
son is weak, both mentally and physically, 
after an illness, and especially after an ill- 
ness associated with delirium. After some 
diseases actual insanity may ensue. Ex- 
cessive fatigue may also cause delirium. 

"Certain poisons, as alcohol, lead, mor- 
phine, cocaine, and the like have a peculiarly 
selective damaging effect on the mind 
and nervous system. The delirium of al- 
coholic intoxication is entirely mental, and 
the same is true of cocaine and morphine 
poisoning. . . . Even more important in 
its effects upon the mental and nervous 
systems is the disease syphilis. More than 

4 



ORGANIC CAUSES OF NERVOUS SYMPTOMS 

thirteen per cent of the first admissions to 
institutions for the insane are due to syph- 
ilis." J 

As this passage suggests, one reason for 
laying so much emphasis on the organic as- 
pect of disease is the fact that nervousness, 
even consciousness itself, is in some way 
bound up with nerves and brain. Inas- 
much as the whole body is organized and 
held together in a more or less harmonious 
unity of action and of purpose, by means 
of nerves and brain, anything whatever 
that tends to injure or tends to destroy the 
being or personality is an instant source 
of nervous reaction which shapes itself in 
the form of symptoms. It follows, there- 
fore, that any actual injury or destruction 
of nerves or brain, in whole or in part, re- 
sults in symptoms of serious nervous or 
mental disease. 

There are two notions included in the 
conception of organic disease : one is the 

1 "Health and Disease", pp. 150-151. 
5 



NERVOUSNESS 

idea of infection; another is the idea of 
inherent, or constitutional, weakness and 
disability. 

The idea of infection implies the idea of 
a foreign organism which has penetrated, 
in some way, the body, and by its presence 
and activities causes the disease. In such 
cases, the cure of the disease consists in 
killing the invading host, without killing, 
or harming, even, if that be possible, the 
patient. 

There is another idea of the cause of dis- 
ease, closely allied to the idea of infection 
but still not quite the same, because the 
agent is not supposed to be alive, and that 
is the idea of poison. Poison is like an 
infection in that it is something external 
and deleterious to the organism if it gets 
into the system, but it is different in that 
it is inorganic and does not grow. 

The conception of inherent, or constitu- 
tional, weakness and disability implies the 
idea that the patient was born defective, 



ORGANIC CAUSES OF NERVOUS SYMPTOMS 

in some way, and so succumbs to condi- 
tions which, if he were stronger, he could 
surmount. Heredity, most often, perhaps, 
is blamed for such weaknesses. 

Thus the source of our interest in organic 
disease is found in the fact that we fear, 
and rightly fear, the effects of injury or 
destruction to nerves and brain. Further- 
more we also fear the results of inherited 
weakness and disability, even more per- 
haps than actual injury, because we think 
that here there is no possibility of hope. 
i In such cases as these, however, the 
patient may protect himself from the pos- 
sible bad effects of inherited weakness by 
greater knowledge of the nature of his 
limitations, and of his powers, and of how 
he may best direct his life. Thus that 
which at first sight may seem to be the ir- 
revocable result of original inheritance may, 
through knowledge, be changed more to 
suit the heart's desire. 

The truth of the matter is that organic 
7 



NERVOUSNESS 

and functional disturbances often are in- 
extricably mixed together. Even in some 
cases where the disease is unquestionably 
organic, the patient's mental attitude to- 
wards his disease is by far the most impor- 
tant aspect of his case. Many times a 
patient gets well or dies according to his 
desire. In certain psychoses where un- 
doubtedly there is an organic basis for the 
disease, not infectious or toxic but consti- 
tutional, there is also a functional aspect 
where the patient regresses into dementia 
or gets well, according to desire. This may 
seem almost incredible, but I have followed 
several just such cases through to a re- 
covery due to their desire. But, truth to 
tell, where much progress has been made 
in the disease, there is seldom sufficient 
desire to get well to result in recovery, ex- 
cept in the so-called circular, or periodic, 
cases, where recovery is almost certain to 
ensue, although relapses are about equally 
certain; unless the patient can get the 

8 



ORGANIC CAUSES OF NERVOUS SYMPTOMS 

proper psychotherapeutic treatment as a 
prophylactic precautionary measure against 
possible future attacks. 

Moreover, certain organic diseases 
may be acquired functionally, so to speak. 
Typhoid fever may be acquired by drink- 
ing impure water which has been warned 
against. Thus soldiers sometimes get in- 
fected by disobeying orders. Alcoholic 
poison, to say nothing of morphine, cocaine, 
and other drugs, is taken sometimes un- 
knowingly, but more often, perhaps, will- 
fully, and thus the beginning of the dis- 
eases that follow is a functional affair, 
while the trouble that follows is, of course, 
organic. 

But it is also to be noted that while or- 
ganic diseases may be mistaken for func- 
tional and the patient suffer accordingly, in 
a great many more cases, probably, the mis- 
take is the other way about, and functional 
diseases are believed to be organic. Indeed, 
I am told by physicians with very extensive 

9 



NERVOUSNESS 

practices that a large proportion of the 
cases they see and treat are functional. 

This is due to a blind, instinctive fear 
on the part of the patient ; fear for his life, 
perhaps, or fear of possible pain, when he 
perceives some sign that in his ignorance 
he may attribute to some dreaded disease. 
For instance, I know of a patient who dis- 
covered, on drawing a deep breath, a lump 
in his chest which frightened him very 
much. He thought of cancer, of surgical 
operations, of possible agony and death, 
and he became almost nauseated with fear. 
But he pulled himself together and went 
to a physician who assured him that it was 
nothing but the end of his breastbone, and 
instantly all fear left him. 

The importance of this illustration lies 
in the fact that it makes clear the difference 
between the real meaning of a symptom 
and the attitude the patient takes towards 
his symptom. The whole trouble in this 
case was functional, due to ignorance and 

10 



_ 



ORGANIC CAUSES OF NERVOUS SYMPTOMS 

fear, and the patient was cured by psycho- 
therapy; in plain words, taught a little 
more about himself, by one in whom he 
believed. The case also illustrates the 
importance of facing a situation and set- 
tling a question which may be due en- 
tirely to fear and ignorance, and not 
due to any inherent or organic disease or 
deformity. 

Ignorance may be regarded as a special 
form of jamming, or blocking, which pre- 
vents free and satisfactory activity of mind 
or body. In the mechanical field jamming 
is easily illustrated. A wheel turning on 
its bearings may be prevented from moving 
freely by the bearings being too tight. 
Obviously there is nothing organically 
wrong with such a situation; all that is 
needed is to loosen the bearings, when the 
wheel will run merrily on. This is a func- 
tional disturbance of the wheel. On the 
other hand, if the wheel could not turn on 
account of a broken axle, or broken bearings, 

11 



NERVOUSNESS 

the trouble would be regarded as inherent, 
or organic, and repair would imply new 
parts. Similar ideas prevail in modern 
conceptions of disease. 

The feeling back of all ideas of the nature 
of disease is the desire to cure. One feels 
that if he knows the nature of the disease, 
or the cause of it, he can cure it, perhaps, 
by removing the cause. From this point 
of view to say that a disease is organic is 
to say that it should be treated physically ; 
if it is functional, it should be treated by 
psychotherapy. But sometimes both forms 
of treatment may be needed. Thus one 
of the distinctions between organic and 
functional disease is based on the conception 
of the kind of treatment required. 

However, as stated in the opening par- 
agraph, the greater number of nervous 
disturbances are functional, in the sense 
of not being due to any known organic 
cause. They are functional, also, in the 
sense of being amenable to psychotherapy ; 

12 



ORGANIC CAUSES OF NERVOUS SYMPTOMS 

and are not to be regarded as hereditary, 
in the sense of being irremediable. It is 
with these functional disturbances that we 
shall hereafter be concerned in the present 
volume. 



13 



Chapter II 
Functional Nervous Disorders 

PERHAPS the most important thing 
to note in every case of functional 
disturbance is that the patient is 
a person. Now every person is sensitive, 
and everything that disturbs him as a per- 
son will also manifest itself in some one 
organ, group of organs, or the whole or- 
ganism. Here is a man who complains of 
headaches ; let us see why. 

In the first place this man's work is 
entirely mental. He writes advertisements 
for a daily newspaper. This, he says, is 
monotonous. But he was offered a position 
as advertising manager on another paper, 
in another State, near by, and though 
he would not get quite so much pay, he 

14 



FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 

thought it would be better for him pro- 
fessionally, in the long run, to have a higher 
title. So he accepted the position as man- 
ager. Too late to change, however, he 
found that his new paper was entirely sub- 
sidized by a man who was running for 
Governor, who wanted his paper merely 
to promote his political interests. As soon 
as the owner of the paper was elected to 
his high position, the paper itself "died", 
and its advertising manager was out of a 
job. In the meantime his old position was 
taken by another, and he had no work. At 
this time he had bad headaches. 

Now this man had headaches because he 
had failed to hold his own in a world of 
men. Without his knowing it, in the first 
place, others had used him for their own 
purposes, and when through, had cast him 
aside. They had tempted him with an 
empty title, and he had fallen. His head- 
ache was a symptom of personal failure. 
It is thus with many headaches. Stock- 

15 



NERVOUSNESS 

brokers not only run to their doctors with 
constipation, as Richard Cabot says, when 
there is a money panic; they also have 
headaches. But not the ones who win 

Sometimes headaches, as well as other 
nervous symptoms, are the result of emo- 
tional shock. Doctor E. W. Taylor tells 
of a patient * who suffered from headaches 
and other symptoms, and he found that 
they dated from the night when she was 
badly frightened by a fire next door, and 
was hurried, half asleep, into the street. 
When the patient found only the partial 
significance of the symptom, and was 
helped a little to understand herself better 
nervously and mentally, her headaches 
were cured. 

Now the essence of all functional dis- 
turbances lies in the fact that the one who 
suffers from them does so because he is 
unable to cope with a given situation, either 
because he is ignorant, or because he is 

1 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1906, p. 152. 
16 



FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 

weak, or because he is both weak and ig- 
norant. 

When I say ignorant, I mean ignorant 
of the motives and purposes that move 
men, including himself; when I say weak, 
I mean weak to bear nervous shocks, to 
control instinctive impulses, even if known 
and understood. Take our newspaper man, 
for example. He was ignorant of the pos- 
sibilities in the starting of a new paper, and 
lacking in good judgment as to his own 
motives in rating a high-sounding title 
above fundamental things. If he had seen 
men as they really are, he would not have 
been disappointed, because he would have 
been ready for them, seeing that they were 
just like himself. The woman who cannot 
stand the shock of finding a house near by 
on fire is either very weak nervously, or 
else already bearing nearly all she can and 
this is the straw that breaks her. 

Let us take some more concrete cases 
and see if what I have said is not true. 

17 



NERVOUSNESS 

Here is a man, sixty years old, who com- 
plains of a "sinking feeling", and who says 
he is "depressed." Why? Because he has 
had a serious psychic shock.* He has lost 
his house and nearly all he had through 
fire. This is much more serious than to 
see somebody else's house go up in flames. 
He feels^too old, too tired out, to start life 
all over again, so he takes to dreaming, in- 
stead of working, and quite naturally feels 
depressed. 

Another man is suffering from insomnia. 
Why? He has lost his position, a very 
desirable one, and wants it so badly that, 
like a spoiled child, he refuses all consola- 
tion through any other opportunity offered, 
and thinks all the time of his loss. Strictly 
speaking, scientifically, he is suffering 
through unsatisfied desire. But does this 
not illustrate both ignorance and weakness ? 
Ignorance as to the nature of desire and its 
proper function in the whole mental 
economy, and weakness in that he cannot 

18 



FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 

think of any adequate substitute for his lost 
opportunity. 

Speaking of insomnia, sometimes, as 
Doctor Taylor has shown clearly, 1 it is the 
result of the fear of it. Here the trouble 
is nothing but ignorance, and a very little 
instruction is all that is necessary to put 
the patient straight to sleep. 

Take another case that illustrates both 
ignorance and personal weakness. 

A patient was suffering from an eczema 
which was very irritating and which in- 
duced a great deal of scratching. The doc- 
tor said it was aggravated, if not caused, 
by nervousness, and the problem was what 
caused the nervousness. A little analysis 
revealed the fact that the patient was feel- 
ing very badly because her father, who was 
over seventy years old, had married again, 
though her mother had been dead these 

^'Progress in the Treatment of the Neuroses", by E. W. 
Taylor, M.D. (Reprinted from Proceedings of New Hampshire 
Medical Society, 1912.) See also "Sleep and Sleeplessness", by 
H. Addington Bruce, in this same series. 

19 



NERVOUSNESS 

many years. But that was not the worst 
part of it. Her sister, who had been taking 
care of her father, and on whose account 
he said he married because she made it so 
uncomfortable for him, came to live with 
her, and tried from the start to run the 
house to suit herself. Further, the patient 
was so angry with her father for marrying 
again she would have nothing more to do 
with him, and so cut herself out of the 
chance of visiting him for a long time in 
the summer and getting a good rest. Then 
the patient liked to be quiet, but the sister 
wanted to talk all the time. The husband 
of the patient had but little time at home, 
and naturally wanted most of it with his 
wife alone, but the sister was always there, 
and always "butting in." Why didn't 
the patient send her sister about her busi- 
ness, one might ask. She was afraid, if 
she did, her sister would not leave her her 
money, and so she did not dare to speak 
her mind. Whether the origin of the ec- 

20 



FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 

zema was in any way due to the family 
strife or not, the aggravation of the itching 
and increase of the scratching was noticeable 
when the patient labored under any in- 
crease of emotional excitement. 

All functional nervous diseases are dis- 
eases of the personality. That is why I 
said their essence lies in ignorance and 
weakness. Only persons are ignorant. 
That is why the patient must be treated 
primarily as a person, sick, and only sec- 
ondarily as a case. In organic disease 
one may treat the disease, more or less ir- 
respective of the person who has the dis- 
ease, although even here the personal re- 
lation is of great importance. But not so 
at all in functional troubles. Here the 
disease itself is a disturbance of the per- 
sonality, as such, even though a particular 
symptom may show itself in some one 
organ or group of organs. 

This personal nature of the functional 
diseases has long been recognized in the 

21 



NERVOUSNESS 

case of hysteria, as Janet has shown, 1 but 
it has not been sufficiently noted in all 
other functional forms of disease and too 
much emphasis has been laid on mere 
"nerves" alone. 

Now one of the most important things 
to notice about a person is that he is sur- 
rounded by other persons, that is, he lives 
in a social environment. Too often we 
think of environment as if it were funda- 
mentally physical, whereas, in reality, it 
is first personal and only lastly physical. 
Through education and development, there- 
fore, a person's mental and nervous make-up 
is very largely social. 

Functional disorders, therefore, always 
take their origin in personal relations. 
Sometimes it may be hard to show just 
what social situation was responsible for 
the disturbance, but, theoretically, it al- 
ways can be found. 

A functional symptom means that that 

1 Pierre Janet, " The Major Symptoms of Hysteria ", p. 332. 



FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 

is the best the patient can do, under the 
circumstances, considering his knowledge, 
wisdom, and what he is up against. It is 
a sort of personal equilibrium, in his rela- 
tions to other persons, a poor equilibrium 
but his own. 

Take the case of this man of fifty, who 
vomits if he makes much exertion after 
meals. What is the trouble? Half of 
his trouble is due to unwise overworking. 
For many years he rose very early in the 
morning, before getting fully rested, and 
worked excessively hard on a farm he was 
trying to clear and put in shape. Then, 
at seven o'clock he went to a factory and 
put in a hard day's work there, till six 
o'clock at night. At night he came home 
and went to work again on his farm, stick- 
ing to it till late, when he would go to bed 
exhausted. This he kept up for years 
until his present illness. But why does 
he vomit? He vomits because he can- 
not "stomach", any more, the exertion he 

33 



NERVOUSNESS 

has been forcing himself through in the 
past. He cannot any longer force his 
stomach muscles to submit to his blind 
ambitions. The symptom is a rebellion 
against slavery, and protects him from 
further overwork. 

jBut, one may say, where is the social 
situation here? And how does this case 
show personal ignorance and weakness? 

Two reasons forced the man to overwork, 
both social : he was ambitious to excel all 
his neighbors in material possessions; and 
he wanted all he could get for his family. 
And does not that, in itself, show a lack of 
knowledge of real values; and mental 
weakness to treat his body more like a 
machine than like the human organism 
it is? 

It will help us, I think, intrying to under- 
stand functional disturbances, if we con- 
sider, for a moment, what a person is. 

A person is a more or less organized 
system of desires; more or less conscious 

24 



FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 

of himself and others ; and more or less of 
a memory trailing off into unconsciousness. 

Some desires, or needs, are necessary to 
life itself, such as the desire for food, for 
air, etc. Others, like the desire for com- 
pany, are necessary for social life. Now 
the next thing to note about desires, as 
well as about persons, is that they are 
highly dynamic and powerful, and also are 
apt to conflict. 

Right here, in these conflicts between 
desires and between people, lies the origin 
of functional disturbances. 

Take the case of a woman who came to 
the clinic complaining of sundry nervous 
symptoms. How did they come about 
and what was their meaning? This per- 
son had been hired to care for an elderly 
woman and, she says, was not previously 
informed that the woman was not mentally 
responsible. Once this woman pointed a 
revolver at her and threatened to shoot 
her, but she calmed her. Then one day 

25 



NERVOUSNESS 

she heard terrible screams outdoors right 
under her window. She rushed out to find 
her charge in flames, and saw her die, 
having successfully committed suicide by 
burning herself to death. 

Undoubtedly our patient was somewhat 
to blame for not watching out more care- 
fully that nothing happened to her charge. 
She tried to forestall criticism of herself, 
however, by suing those who hired her for 
not telling her that her mistress was insane 
and likely to try to commit suicide. When 
she came to the hospital, her case had not 
been tried and settled in the courts, and her 
symptoms were associated with her conse- 
quent mental conflicts. 

At first the patient said her husband was 
dead and that she was a widow, with a 
young daughter to support. But later she 
confessed that her husband was not dead, 
and that she intended getting a divorce be- 
cause he had abused her so. Here, then, we 
see a little into her mental conflicts, and 



FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 

also into her personal conflicts, in which 
her nervous symptoms took their rise. 

I have taken this extreme case for il- 
lustrative purposes because we can see 
more clearly in extreme cases than in less 
striking situations the outstanding ele- 
ments involved. But, be it remembered, 
the principles are the same in all functional 
disturbances. 

This is also true when seemingly the 
nervous sufferer has everything in the world 
he wants. Mental and personal conflicts 
are at the bottom of all functional troubles. 

The successful business man who breaks 
down nervously does so, it may be, because 
he has a difficult wife to get along with, 
who makes life miserable for him. That is, 
perhaps, the reason he is so successful in 
a business way ; he tries to get away from 
marital misery by going in for business 
feverishly. On the other hand, the nerv- 
ous wife breaks down, perhaps, because 
her husband is not all he should be, and 

27 



NERVOUSNESS 

she knows no way out, so simply suffers 
silently. 

Such disasters imply, of course, as I said 
at first, personal weakness, ignorance, poor 
judgment, and lack of wisdom. But, notice, 
all these qualities are matters of personality, 
social opportunities, education, training, 
and personal care. These are not matters 
of the microscope, nor lesions of the nerves. 
There may be congenital weakness, but 
even so, in a proper social environment, 
this weakness may be the necessary cor- 
relate of exquisite beauty and social value, 
if wisely ordered. 

This shows another aspect of possible 
conflict. The socially sensitive person 
wants to do whatever his society wants 
from him. But if he cannot do the ob- 
vious things and cannot imagine what he 
could do to take their place, he may suffer 
seriously because of the gap between his 
powers and his desires. Such conflicts, 
I imagine, are more common among women 

28 



FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISORDERS 

than among men, because women usually 
are more sensitive to social demands and 
social sanctions. But men are very sen- 
sitive to social sanctions, if the society is 
of their own choosing. 
r Now what happens to desires, or to per- 
sons, if they cannot reach their ends ? 

If they cannot gain their objects directly, 
one or the other, or all, of several things 
may happen : either the end is gained by 
indirection; or another object, in whole 
or in part, is substituted ; or, if no adequate 
substitute takes the place of the original 
object, the desires turn to dreams, and the 
person, more or less consciously, becomes 
a dreamer. 

Dreams and reality, then, shall be the 
subject of the next chapter. 



29 



Chapter III 

Dreams, Reality, and Nervous Disor- 
ganization 

THE normal result of a desire is to 
get itself satisfied. If, for any 
reason, it cannot reach its end di- 
rectly, it will try to do the same thing 
indirectly. If even then it finds itself 
baffled, it may give up its first object and 
turn to something else which it can get. 
But if it refuses to give up its original ob- 
ject, and it is impossible to get that object, 
then the desire turns to a dream, and 
may so remain indefinitely. This, by the 
way, is the origin of all dreams. 

From this point of view reality is what- 
ever prevents desire from reaching its 
object. Reality, therefore, may be other 

30 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

desires of the person, or other persons and 
their desires, or facts of space and time. 
For instance, a person may be starving in 
a desert. At first he dreams of being home 
and eating at a banquet; then there is a 
mirage, a sort of illusion, of an oasis with 
water, etc. ; then, perhaps, just before he 
dies of thirst and starvation, he enters 
into a delirium where he has hallucinations 
and thinks he is eating, and all is well. 
Thus a desire like that for food, neces- 
sary for life, if prevented long enough from 
being satisfied, first turns to dreams, then 
to illusions, to hallucinations, finally end- 
ing in death for the person so deprived. 
Other less important desires, if obstructed, 
follow the same course, though not so far 
as death. 

Death itself is a reality the mind fre- 
quently refuses to accept. A little girl 
who had lost her father dreamed one night 
that he flew in the window, got into bed 
with her mother, and everythiug was all 

31 



NERVOUSNESS 

right again, and she was happy. Her 
dear desire, refusing to accept reality, 
created the dream. 

Sickness most minds refuse to accept 
quietly. A man who had broken down 
nervously, and who had had to give up 
work, dreamed one night that he was back 
at the office. 'Twas his desire created 
the dream. 

The desire for life and health and 
strength creates dreams when anything 
seriously interferes with these desires. 
"Serious disturbances of the internal or- 
gans apparently act as inciters of dreams 
in a considerable number of persons," 1 
says Freud, and the reason lies in the 
desire for health. 

The following account by a trained 
thinker corroborates Freud's observation. 

"At least twenty times during a period 
of six months I had the same dream — 
namely, that a cat was clawing at my 

1 Sigmund Freud, "The Interpretation of Dreams ", p. 28. 
32 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

throat. The stage setting and the minor 
incidents might vary, but always the cen- 
tral episode was the same, and usually the 
fury of the dream cat's onset was so 
great that it would awaken me. Nat- 
urally, this recurrent dream puzzled me, 
so much so that I spoke about it. But, 
ascribing it to indigestion, and classifying 
it with ordinary nightmares, I did not let 
it worry me at all. 

"Then, one day, the accident of a heavy 
cold that settled in my throat led to a 
medical examination which, much to my 
surprise, revealed the presence of a growth 
requiring immediate treatment by the sur- 
geon's knife. Some time afterward it sud- 
denly occurred to me that since the removal 
of the dangerous growth I had not once 
been troubled by the cat-clawing dream. 

"I had suffered no pain, not even in- 
convenience, from the growth in my 
throat. In fact, I had not consciously 
been aware of its presence. But unques- 

33 



NERVOUSNESS 

tionably the organic changes accompany- 
ing it had given rise to sensations which, 
slight though they were, had made an 
impression on my sleeping consciousness 
sufficient to excite it to activity." * 

Some questions are raised by this dream 
which we should answer. Why did the 
dreamer symbolize the organic growth as 
an animal ? Why did he think the trouble 
something external to himself? Why did 
he not perceive it for what it was ? 

The reason the dreamer did not perceive 
what was the actual trouble was because 
in sleep, or under the conditions of partial 
consciousness, he could not think of things 
in anything like all their relations, he only 
realized that something was troubling him. 
He thought of it as external, and as an 
animal, in part, at least, because then he 
could get rid of it easily. If it were ex- 
ternal it did not vitally affect him, and 
pictured as an animal, it was possible to 

1 H. Addington Bruce, "Sleep and Sleeplessness ", pp. 37-38. 
34 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

get rid of the trouble easily by killing it. 
Thus desire transformed reality into a 
form easily amenable to his own unaided 
powers. This enabled him to escape the 
fear that would have arisen if he had 
recognized the growth as an organic dis- 
ease. In other words, it postponed the 
evil hour when he must consult the sur- 
geon, and only later, by accident, so to 
speak, was the unwelcome truth dis- 
covered. Then, of course, he met the is- 
sue bravely, and so, perhaps, his life was 
saved. The essential reason for the dream, 
then, was delay. It prevented conscious- 
ness from being too suddenly shocked by 
the truth. It preserved the dreamer's 
peace of mind. 

Now what is true of the normal and 
highly trained mind is also true of the 
nervous and less trained mind in even 
greater degree. In a normal person the 
dream may only postpone the truth it 
foreshadows; in a nervous person it may 

35 



NERVOUSNESS 

effectually conceal forever the real trouble. 
The real troubles of normal and of nerv- 
ous persons are the same : they are con- 
flicts with reality. And as I said before, 
reality is anything, — in the heavens 
above, the earth beneath, or the waters 
under the earth, — that interferes with 
the darling desires of our hearts. When 
reality is too much for any one a dream 
then takes its place. 

A poor young girl who had been through 
terrible trouble felt weak, tired, and like 
sleeping all the time. She said she wished 
she were dead, and added that she often 
dreamed of dead people, funerals, and 
graveyards. Reality had been too much 
for this poor child, and so she wished to 
escape ; but, not daring to commit suicide, 
and still loving life a little, she merely 
dreamed of death. Death to her meant 
sleeping all the time. Death meant peace. 

Thus, the more sensitive a person is, 
the less able he is to fight his way through 

36 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

the harsh realities of life, the more he 
tends to dream. Also, the harsher the 
external realities of life are to the indi- 
vidual, the more he is apt to dream. 
Dreams, therefore, may be symptoms, not 
only of organic disturbance, but also of 
nervous disorders. Indeed, this is much 
more frequently the case than that they 
presage some organic disease. 

Reality, therefore, includes the original 
strength, and the wisdom in the use of his 
strength, of the person. This complication 
is why the concrete case is often so hard 
to understand and so hard to relieve. 

Now conflicts are usually, perhaps I 
might say always, of two sorts : They 
either relate to business, work, or profes- 
sion, or they relate to the love-life, or 
both. And dreams, either night dreams, 
or day dreams, or dream life, or all to- 
gether, invariably result when the conflict 
is too much for the individual person. 

A business man gave up his work be- 
37 



NERVOUSNESS 

cause of nervousness. One night he had 
the following dream : 

He dreamed he was showing a clerk how 
to check up his account. The president 
of his company came and put his arm 
around him, and he explained to him what 
he was doing. Then the president left him. 

Business realities had been too much for 
this man, and so he had given up business. 
But, nevertheless, he wished he were back, 
and so he was, in his dream. And his 
dream refashioned reality more to his 
taste, and made the president an af- 
fectionate fellow who put his arm around 
his favorite clerk's shoulder. And, besides, 
he was the happy favorite. Thus, in his 
dream, he combined business and love as 
he would like to have it, but did not 
actually find it in the real world of business. 

This was a night dream. But this same 
man frequently finds himself carrying on 
day-dreams. In one he imagined a busi- 
ness associate to have some freight cars 

38 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

to sell. He thought, to himself, that 
they could use some cars in his business, 
so he telephoned to headquarters and 
told them he knew of some cars that could 
be bought reasonably, and they said go 
ahead and buy them. Then he asked if 
there were anything in it for him, if he 
could make the sale, and they said yes, 
five per cent. Then he came to and 
realized it was all only a day-dream. 

It is not necessary to do more than to 
point out that all this is only reality 
changed to suit desire, in a day-dream, 
and not reality as it actually is. 

But not only does this man dream at 
night, and also by day, he leads besides a 
sort of dream life of leisure and amuse- 
ment. He has escaped from the life of 
reality only to get caught in a life of 
dreams. But he does not like that either, 
and so seeks escape. That is really why 
he is nervous. He is trying to escape re- 
ality and himself. But escape is impossible. 

39 



NERVOUSNESS 

His fighting and egotistical instincts are 
shown in the following dream which he 
had one night : 

He could see the Russian and German 
armies fighting and noted that the Rus- 
sians needed help. Then, in response to 
their need, 100,000 American soldiers came 
swinging into line, and under his direction 
proceeded to thrash the Germans. 

Thus, in a dream, he was the brave 
leader of a victorious American army; 
in reality, he is a nervous sufferer, unable 
to do much of any business : The dream, 
however, showed his deep desire. 

There is a very real danger, here, if this 
sort of thing is allowed to proceed too far. 

"The possibly pernicious effect of day- 
dreaming," says Bernard Hart, 1 "is seen 
even better when it is employed as a 
refuge, so to speak, from reality. If the 
young man .... in his efforts to make a 
career and to achieve distinction, experi- 

l "The Psychology of Insanity ", p. 145. 
40 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

ences rebuffs and failures, he may be in- 
duced to allow his complexes to express 
themselves by the construction of phan- 
tasies rather than by the sterner struggle 
to alter facts. He may console himself 
by pleasant dreams in which he marches 
to imaginary victory, while his enemies 
bow the knee in envious admiration. He 
may live for a time in so attractive a world 
that he finds it hard to drag himself back 
into relation with things as they are. In 
our technical language we should say that 
he finds the complex incompatible with 
his actual environment, that there is 
conflict between the complex and reality. 
He compromises the difficulty by making 
no further attempts to combine the two 
opposing forces, but gives up the struggle 
with life, and retires temporarily into a 
world of the imagination where the com- 
plex works its will without colliding 
against brutal facts. 

"This phenomenon is extremely com- 
41 



NERVOUSNESS 

mon, and most of us at one time or an- 
other console ourselves for the failure of 
our ambitions in the real world by the 
creation of these pleasant fancies. But a 
path opens here which leads us easily across 
the bridge into the regions of insanity." 

It is not commonly known how much 
injury to the nervous system may result 
if day-dreaming be continuously indulged 
in. Day-dreaming means divorce from 
reality, and when one is in this state any 
sudden interruption will startle and nerv- 
ously disturb out of all proportion to the 
objective reality. But there is a worse 
result to continuous day-dreaming than 
being suddenly startled. It may lead to 
a mental dissociation in which the nerv- 
ous mechanism of imagination works to 
exhaustion, so to speak, and which the 
owner feels as intolerable nervousness. 
There is probably an actual exhaustion of 
that part of the brain used when imagi- 
nation goes on. 

42 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

The first bad result of day-dreaming is 
that it de-socializes the dreamer. We 
need social inspiration and help for the 
health of our minds as we do food for our 
bodies. Thinking only our own thoughts, 
day after day, we get mental indigestion, 
and so become unhealthy. We hear all 
kinds of moral reasons why we should be 
social, but the relation between mental 
health and social intercourse has not been 
sufficiently emphasized. 

I have said above that day-dreaming 
means divorce from reality, and the reality 
I meant was social reality, the reality of 
other people. The instant that dissociation 
becomes complete, if only for an instant, 
in that instant our minds become increas- 
ingly liable to internal disorganization. 
The steps leading to this are ordinarily 
hidden from view, but they are there 
nevertheless. 

In all this I do not wish to leave the 
impression that imagination is a bad thing. 

43 



NERVOUSNESS 

On the contrary it is one of the greatest 
gifts of mankind. Without it life, as we 
know it, would hardly be worth the living. 
It is what the great artist has that makes 
beauty possible in his pictures. It is the 
source of all great literature, great music, 
great architecture, great statesmanship, 
great religion, great science. Without it 
invention would be impossible, and life 
would be on the level of the lower animals. 
But imagination run riot, dissociated from 
reality and degenerated into mere day- 
dreams, is a disease and means the loss of 
mental health. It is the abuse of imagi- 
nation that is so disastrous. 

A fundamental characteristic of a per- 
son is desire. A person may be said to 
be an organized system of more or less 
self-conscious desires or cravings. The 
child, if he cannot get what he wants, 
tends to imagine it as already his, and 
this leads to day-dreaming, phantasies, or 
even hallucinations. Now this day-dream- 

44 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

ing, if indulged in long enough, becomes 
more or less unconscious, dissociated from 
conscious, purposive thinking, and goes 
on independently, beyond conscious con- 
trol. This saps the available mental en- 
ergy, leaving the patient nervous, irri- 
table, and a burden to himself and to his 
friends. He may not realize that this in- 
dependent, imaginative, unconscious pro- 
cess is going on, and has not the slightest 
idea that it is slowly but surely undermin- 
ing his mental poise. But he feels nerv- 
ous, starts at the slightest sound, and 
cannot stand any interference with the 
instantaneous gratification of all his desires. 

The demand for instantaneous gratifi- 
cation, without effort, of all desires, is the 
infantile form of thought. This leads to 
an attempt at self -gratification, through 
the imagination, to avoid the necessary 
wait if one is to accomplish really the 
satisfaction of his heart's desire. 

Now one way to avoid the nervousness 
45 



NERVOUSNESS 

due to day-dreaming is to get to work. 
Do something, if it is no more than chop- 
ping wood. Work relieves the tension of 
the accumulated nervous energy, and lets 
one down to a comfortable level of pleasant 
fatigue. But some people won't work, 
perhaps they cannot work, and for them a 
different course is necessary. 

In the case where the good old-fashioned 
idea of work is ineffective, or impossible, 
the thing to do is to analyze the uncon- 
scious phantasies, thoughts, and day- 
dreams, and hold them up to view for 
criticism and regulation. They are always 
found to be desires, and some of them may 
be worthy of considerable effort. These, 
when conscious, become purposes, and are 
no longer unconscious sources of mere 
nervousness. Some are found to be un- 
worthy, and all that is needed to put a 
quietus to their unholy clamorings is that 
they be made conscious through mental 
analysis. 

46 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

I should be doing a very great injustice 
to the nervous sufferers from day-dreams 
and night dreams, if I left the impression 
that they could stop their dreaming by a 
mere fiat of will. It is not so simple as 
that. The dreams are the result of con- 
flicts which are not even known as con- 
flicts. The obstacles are not perceived 
even, and the chains and bars and locks 
and walls of their prison are invisible to 
the prisoners who, unaided, can do noth- 
ing else but dream of freedom. 

The dream is automatic, due to un- 
conscious mental processes which are of 
the nature of instincts, and which are 
equally blind. The disease is blindness, 
and the cure is vision. Freedom of spirit, 
as well as freedom of body, is only possible 
to those who can see. 

Not often do dreams portend anything 
more serious than inefficiency in the 
world's work, but sometimes they show 
conflicts so serious in the soul that suffers 

47 



NERVOUSNESS 

from them that they also result in most 
distressing nervous symptoms. This is par- 
ticularly true of conflicts in the love-life, 
as the following story will show. 

A woman suffered from nausea, faint- 
ness, and a feeling of dizziness, which came 
on in a dream. She had been sitting in 
her hammock on the piazza, one warm 
afternoon, day-dreaming, when she fell 
asleep. She dreamed a dream, and when 
she woke she had the above symptoms, 
which persisted, while the dream passed 
out of consciousness and was seemingly for- 
gotten. She finally remembered her 
dream, however, and when she saw its 
deeper significance, she recovered from her 
nervous symptoms. 

The dream was that she was in a great 
hall, like one she remembered reading 
about in Ivanhoe. She was dressed in 
gorgeous raiment and surrounded by 
courtiers. One, more powerful than the 
rest, drew her aside and said she must 

43 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

come with him and forswear her allegiance 
to her husband, and just as he was leading 
her off, she woke nauseated, faint, and 
dizzy. 

She soon saw the meaning of her dream. 
In reality her husband was inefficient and 
hardly earned enough to pay her neces- 
sary bills, and was not at all able to pro- 
vide her with the beautiful clothes she 
longed for in her heart. So she had been 
pondering over in her mind, in a sort of 
day-dream, the idea of getting a divorce 
and marrying a more efficient if less lov- 
able man if she could, or if not, to go back 
to her parents. The dream simply sym- 
bolized, in romantic fashion, her unworthy 
but instinctive desire. 

Like all good stories, this one ended well. 
She decided to be true to her husband, 
even though he could not give her all the 
money she wanted. And when she found 
the real significance of her struggle was a 
moral conflict, she was equal to the oc- 

49 



NERVOUSNESS 

casion, because she really loved her "big 
boy" husband, as she called him. 

Now this little story is worthy of some 
thought. Suppose our poor nauseated, 
suffering patient had not remembered the 
circumstances in which her symptoms 
started? What if she had not been able 
to recall her dream? Why could she 
not put two and two together herself, and 
so heal herself? 

To answer the last question first, the 
reason she did not, could not, cure herself, 
was because she did not think there was 
any important connection between her 
dream and her trouble. Her symptoms 
were dissociated, so to speak, from any 
consciously understood relation of cause 
and effect. A moral disgust at thinking 
of herself as so near to being unfaithful 
was at the bottom of her nausea, but she 
could not see any connection between 
moral disgust and physical nausea. And 
though the dream was as a mirror of her 

50 



DREAMS AND NERVOUS DISORGANIZATION 

soul, she saw but darkly, and dismissed 
the vision as unpleasant and unimportant. 

If she had not easily recalled her dream, 
or if she could not have remembered the 
circumstances in which her symptoms first 
became manifest, it might have been a 
long while before she would have recovered ; 
and in any case life probably would have 
gone on from bad to worse, and she would 
have been most miserable. 

This isolating of instinctive impulses 
and desires and repressing them, shoving 
them out of consciousness, so to speak, 
results in a breach of the mind which is 
spoken of as dissociation, a dividing of 
the soul. 



51 



Chapter IV 
The Divided Soul 

A PERSON alternates between being 
conscious and being unconscious. 
While fully conscious he is awake, 
aware of himself and others; while sound 
asleep, he is unconscious and not even 
aware of himself. Between these two 
limits there may be all grades of con- 
sciousness and unconsciousness, both as 
to extent and as to intensity. Expressed 
psychologically, a person's desires for con- 
sciousness and for unconsciousness al- 
ternate and mingle, increase and diminish, 
without known limit. 

While unconscious — in sleep, for in- 
stance — a person's instincts and impulses 
are usually inhibited as to action, but are 

52 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

partially free as to pictorial representation 
in dreams. While consciousness holds 
sway, on the other hand, usually only 
such thoughts and ideas are allowed to 
come to consciousness as the highest social 
and moral sanctions permit. 

In the borderland between sleep and 
waking, however, unconscious instincts, 
impulses, and desires get more or less 
expression in more or less conscious pic- 
torial form in dreams. The reason dreams 
are so symbolical 1 and thus so obscure is 
because the instincts and the impulses they 
prefigure, if allowed full sway and satis- 
faction, irrespective of others, would prove 
to be unsocial and hence personally un- 
pleasant. All this we have seen con- 
cretely illustrated in our chapter on dreams. 

Now consciousness is very sensitive and 
is limited in its ability to bear unpleasant- 

1 For the best popular exposition of symbolism and its sig- 
nificance see Doctor Wm. A. White's book, "Mechanisms of 
Character Formation," published by Macmillan Company. 

53 



NERVOUSNESS 

nesses, and if it is pushed beyond its limits, 
so to speak, it automatically protects itself 
in several ways. It may disappear en- 
tirely, and the person sink into uncon- 
sciousness as, for instance, from a blow 
on the head. Or, if a person is suffering 
from any pain too intense to bear, he will 
become unconscious. Or any other rush 
of sensations, feelings, or emotions, too 
much for consciousness to bear, may re- 
sult in consciousness retiring, so to speak, 
from the assault, and the person then 
loses consciousness, perhaps forever. 

But consciousness may protect itself in 
other ways than by giving up the fight 
entirely and disappearing. It sometimes, 
though not always, has the power of 
automatically diverting the attacking sen- 
sations, feelings, or emotions from itself 
and directing them more or less into 
bodily forms, and then the person suffers, 
not mentally, not emotionally, perhaps, 
but bodily, and shows his sufferings in 

64 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

physical symptoms more or less definitely 
localized and determined. This is the 
most obvious and striking form of mental 
dissociation, or the divided soul. 

Sometimes, in certain persons, conscious- 
ness has not this power of diverting feel- 
ings and emotions from itself, and then, 
perhaps, it may split the inner self, the 
"I" itself, into discordant parts which 
war on each other. These discords in the 
harmony of souls range all the way from 
slight social disturbances, through re- 
ligious conflicts, to morbid fears and 
dreads, or phobias, to insane delusions 
and insanities. 

James has the right of the matter when 
he says, "Consciousness is at all times 
primarily a selecting agency. Whether we 
take it in the lowest sphere of sense, or 
in the highest of intellection, we find it 
always doing one thing, choosing one out 
of several of the materials so presented to 
its notice, emphasizing and accentuating 

55 



NERVOUSNESS 

that and suppressing as far as possible all 
the rest." * In James' "Five Characters 
in Thought" , the most important one is, 
"Every thought tends to be part of a per- 
sonal consciousness." 2 He goes on to 
say, "Thoughts — do continually tend to 
appear as parts of personal selves. I say 
'tend to appear' rather than 'appear', on 
account of those facts of subconscious 
personality, automatic writing, etc. . . . 
According to M. Janet these secondary 
personalities . . . result from the split- 
ting of what ought to be a single complete 
self into two parts, of which one lurks in 
the background, whilst the other appears 
on the surface as the only self the man or 
woman has." 3 

What is so apparent in such extreme 
cases as these is equally true, though less 
apparent, in all of us. We see it rather 
clearly, however, in our social self. Again, 



William James, "Psychology", Vol. 1, p. 139. 
2 Ibid., p. 225. » Ibid., p. 227. 

56 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

James has phrased this aspect of the affair 
incomparably. He says, "A man's social 
self is the recognition which he gets from 
his mates. We are not only gregarious 
animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, 
but we have an innate propensity to get 
ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, 
by our kind. No more fiendish punish- 
ment could be devised, were such a thing 
physically possible, than that one should 
be turned loose in society and remain ab- 
solutely unnoticed by all the members 
thereof. If no one turned round when we 
entered, answered when we spoke, or 
minded what we did, but if every person 
we met 'cut us dead' and acted as if we 
were non-existing things, a kind of rage 
and impotent despair would ere long well 
up in us, from which the cruellest bodily 
tortures would be a relief." * 

This war has made physically possible 
what James could only conceive of, and 

1 William James, "Psychology", Vol. 1, p. 293. 
57 



NERVOUSNESS 

we have seen concretely consummated the 
end, in death, of condign social punish- 
ment. 

Therefore it is our social selves that get 
split off, and this is why the nervous 
sufferer tastes the dregs of personal de- 
spair. And the thing that really causes 
such intense sufferings as sometimes end 
in death is a social consciousness of dis- 
cordant splittings of the self. 

Now this may give some hint and meas- 
ure of the sufferings of the divided soul. 
While, for some, it takes the actual con- 
demnation of his social mates to make any 
serious impression, for other, more sensi- 
tive, souls, all that is needed is the self- 
criticism of his own hypercritical and 
uninstructed social consciousness. 

Thus, finally, there may come about an 
actual split between his social consciousness 
and consciousness of his instinctive and 
primitive desires, in order to preserve 
his peace of mind. When this takes place, 

58 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

the person's conscious self, his soul, his 
"I", identifies itself with his social con- 
sciousness, and separates itself from its 
deeper, more instinctive, personal desires, 
which live on, however, in the unconscious 
self. 

Still other ways has consciousness of 
protecting itself from too great disturb- 
ances and unpleasantnesses. It may sep- 
arate, for instance, from ideas and 
thoughts their feelings, normally associ- 
ated with them, and give those feelings 
over to other ideas with which they natu- 
rally have no connections at all, and in 
this way the whole condition may become 
most mystifying. The person really suf- 
fers from one thing but thinks he is suffer- 
ing from something else — and this is not 
insanity, either, but happens to otherwise 
most normal people. Here is a still more 
subtle form of the divided soul. 

Now, with this newer, deeper, more 
inclusive insight, let us consider some of 

59 



NERVOUSNESS 

the patients mentioned in preceding chap- 
ters, where organic and functional symp- 
toms were more or less mixed. And first 
consider, from this point of view, our 
dizzy, nauseated, nervous dreamer, who 
was so easily relieved. 

We see, right off, that her symptoms 
had no connection, in her consciousness, 
with her relations to her husband. She 
thought, probably, that she had eaten 
something that had disagreed with her. 
In other words, her desire to escape from 
what she regarded as a bad bargain, her 
fear of consequences if she shirked her 
duty, all the social and moral reasons 
why she should be loyal, to say nothing 
of the fact that really she loved her hus- 
band dearly, were dissociated from her 
conscious self, as a whole, and were thus 
beyond conscious understanding and self- 
control. She was literally a divided soul. 

She had, without realizing it, really, 
although half unconsciously, seriously con- 

60 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

sidered yielding to her temptation. But it 
made her sick to think of being unfaithful, 
so she refused, instinctively, to think of it 
at all self-consciously. But she actually 
had not given up the idea ; she had merely 
refused consciously to think of it. Un- 
consciously she still held to her unworthy, 
but perfectly natural and instinctive desire. 
This separation of desires, or wishes and 
cravings, from social self-consciousness is 
what constitutes mental dissociation. Un- 
known, unrecognized, the desires live on 
in unconsciousness, and give rise to most 
mysterious symptoms. The symptoms are 
mysterious, because, at first, one cannot 
see why there should be any symptoms at 
all. To all intents and purposes the 
patient looks, it may be, perfectly well. 
And the most thoroughgoing physical ex- 
amination imaginable cannot disclose any- 
thing the matter. We easily see why. 
No physical examination can possibly 
show a desire to be unfaithful to a 

61 



NERVOUSNESS 

lovable but inefficient husband. Nor can 
this desire be revealed by microscopic, 
chemical, or any other physical modifica- 
tion of neuropathic analysis. It can be 
seen only by a mind capable of grasping 
the whole social situation. 

The case is no different, although it 
may be more complicated, if the patient 
is also suffering from some organic disease. 
Exactly similar was the trouble with the 
tuberculous patient who became hysteri- 
cally blind. This woman had had long 
continued trouble with her husband. She 
had long suspected him of disloyalty. But 
she herself had not been wholly true in 
heart, and had longed for release from 
loyalty to him. On account of her tu- 
berculosis she had had to stay a long time 
at a sanitarium, and here became in- 
fatuated, more or less, with one of the 
officials. Indeed she had dreamed that 
he had kissed her. 

One day she received a letter from her 
62 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

husband which stirred her to the depths by 
a discrepancy in dates. It seemed to 
prove his faithlessness, and at the same 
time it tended to arouse in her all the 
temptations she had for years been try- 
ing to keep under. She resolved to put 
the whole thing out of her mind. She re- 
fused to let her conscious thoughts con- 
sider what was brewing underneath the 
surface. At last, success ! She no longer 
saw the horrid sight her imagination 
seemed so fascinated by. Her soul was 
saved ! But her sight was gone ! 

At the very moment she got rid of the 
conscious thoughts that had held her as 
in an hypnotic spell, she became blind. 
She became not only blind, but she could 
not remember what her husband's business 
was, nor could she tell the hospital au- 
thorities his telephone number so they 
could send for him* in this terrifying and 
most mysterious attack. In other words, 
she became so disassociated she could 

63 



NERVOUSNESS 

neither see nor remember many of the 
most important things of her life. Her 
soul was saved but at what a price — the 
partial dissolution of her "self." It had 
lost its power of sight — and in large part 
lost its memory. Luckily, however, this 
loss was only temporary. 

In a certain sense, of course, she saved 
her soul at the expense of her sight. I 
mean she repressed her impulses to do 
wrong, to take advantage of her hus- 
band's suspected lack of loyalty to give 
up her own loyalties. From this point of 
view, to save one's soul means not con- 
sciously to give in to the personal tempta- 
tion to some social wrong, but to deny the 
temptation as even existing. Metaphori- 
cally speaking, in such extreme cases as 
these, if their eye offends them, they pluck 
it out; literally, such persons feel that if 
their mind's eye, so to speak, reveals un- 
worthy thoughts, they should deny them, 
dissociate themselves from even thinking of 

64 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

evil. Thus, such sufferers may be among 
the most moral persons living, only they 
fail to see, through no fault of their own, 
that there is possible a still higher and 
better morality, where the soul retains its 
unity and organization, while yet refusing 
to carry out, in toto, its instincts and its 
impulses. Such a person, such a soul, 
sees with a clear vision and so can con- 
sciously control that which, unconscious, 
is capable of disorganizing the whole per- 
sonality. 

It was no otherwise with the syphilitic 
patient mentioned in our first chapter, 
suspected of incipient insanity. He, too, 
was a divided soul. His social conscious- 
ness refused to face his more fundamental 
and primitive desires. 

His temptation was to be unfaithful to 
his wife. But yet he dearly loved her. 
So they quarreled. Knowing that syphilis 
does sometimes end in insanity, it was 
quite natural to suspect it in such a case. 

65 



NERVOUSNESS 

But a careful psychological investigation 
showed that the mental symptoms — in his 
case, too, connected with his vision, but 
in addition with his lost control of temper 
— were simply an inner turning away from 
duties; a lapsing into day-dreams when 
he should have been whole-heartedly at 
work; the expression of a longing to give 
up his loyalty to his wife and be a child 
again, protected by his mother, who, by 
the way, was dead. 

The divided soul is loyal, but loyal to 
the past at the expense of loyalty to the 
present and to the future; it is loyal, but 
loyal to a part, disloyal to a whole. In- 
deed, that is why a soul becomes divided. 
It shrinks from facing all of life, all of it- 
self included, and though it will not give 
up life or self in reality, it separates itself 
from consciously complete self -understand- 
ing. 

A soul separated from its stomach, if 
not for too long a time, may still seem 

66 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

a pretty good sort of soul; but, a soul 
without sight or memory is in a parlous 
state. Still worse off, however, is that 
soul whose feelings and emotions are sepa- 
rated from their appropriate ideas and 
thoughts, and are improperly associated 
with inappropriate ideas and thoughts. 
Such a soul is one which suffers fear, or 
terror, even, in closed places, as in a room 
with the door shut, or in a car, or in a 
train, or in the subway. A person whose 
soul was thus divided suffered an agony of 
fear at the thought of passing money she 
had received. She was afraid she would 
infect, in some way, the person she passed 
the money to, and then they might sicken 
and die. 

This terror was no mere figment of the 
imagination. She suffered so her body 
quivered in one mass and agony of fear. 
Indeed, on days following such attacks, 
she had fearful diarrheas. But she is 
sane and most unusually efficient in her 

67 



NERVOUSNESS 

affairs, a college graduate of high attain- 
ments. 

Another person, a man of great business 
success and ability, was unable, on ac- 
count of terror, to enter and go through a 
subway. In some mysterious way, un- 
known to him, the idea of going through 
the subway struck terror to his heart. 

In both these persons feelings and emo- 
tions, proper to some ideas, or thoughts, 
were most inappropriately hitched up to 
other thoughts and acts important to their 
daily life. 

A mental disassociation of still greater 
degree is reached, if feelings and emotions 
properly associated with certain aspects 
of the self become so powerful that the 
social consciousness of the individual, al- 
together or in part, becomes paralyzed, so 
to speak, and the perceptions of the self 
and its true relations to society become 
quite false, and the person suffers from in- 
sane delusions. 

68 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

It has been said that sanity cannot be 
defined. That is quite true, because no- 
body knows wherein consists completely 
social consciousness. But insanity is quite 
easily defined. It consists in false per- 
ceptions of the self and of its right re- 
lations to society. Insanity is false social 
self -consciousness. 

I said the person with insane delusions 
suffers. Probably there is no suffering to 
be compared with the suffering in some 
cases of insanity. We do not sufficiently 
appreciate such suffering because, not be- 
lieving in the ideas associated with it, we 
are apt to disbelieve in the suffering itself. 

A person whose social consciousness was 
almost, but not quite, overwhelmed by 
false perceptions of her self and its true 
relations to society, suffered agonies be- 
cause she thought people talked in con- 
demnation of her on the streets as she 
passed by; and that ministers preached 
sermons against her in their pulpits; and 

09 



NERVOUSNESS 

that these sermons then were published in 
the daily papers. 

Now this woman was cured of her in- 
sane delusions ; but usually it is practically 
very difficult to relieve such conditions, 
though theoretically quite possible, be- 
cause when the emotions and feelings are 
so strong as to cause complete belief in 
their inverted ideas, the patients cannot 
be reasoned with anent their delusions 
until the cause of their emotions is dis- 
covered and removed. 

This is also true as regards phobias, ob- 
sessions, and compulsive acting. The 
causes immediately responsible for these 
conditions are powerful, but misplaced, 
emotions and feelings, and the reasons for 
this misplacement have first to be dis- 
covered and removed, before reason can 
get hold, so to speak, of the overemphasized 
ideas. 

Now one reason for this dissolution and 
false perception of the soul lies in a mis- 

70 






THE DIVIDED SOUL 

conception of what constitutes a good 
person. One is apt to think that per- 
sonally he is good if he fulfills two require- 
ments : first, if he allows no mental image 
of his desires, if they are commonly re- 
puted to be evil, to come to completion in 
his consciousness ; second, if he does not 
carry out his impulses socially, although 
they remain, in all integrity, in the un- 
conscious regions of his soul. Thus he 
splits his soul, horizontally, so to speak, 
and refuses to look into the darker regions 
underneath, fearing if he does look he will 
fall. 

Phrased otherwise, the trouble really 
amounts to this: the person is socially 
hypersensitive, and feels socially inferior 
and inefficient. In other words such suf- 
ferers would love mankind if they only 
knew how they could worthily serve man- 
kind. And if they could love and serve, 
they would not be sick. H. G. Wells 
wrote in his book, "Great Britain, France, 

71 



NERVOUSNESS 

and Italy at War", "I have fallen in love 
with mankind." The very next book he 
published, a month later, was only a gen- 
eralization of his love, and he called his 
book, "God — The Invisible King." 

All functionally nervous persons, includ- 
ing some of the insane, suffer from love 
turned in on itself, because of inadequate 
opportunity, or inadequate ability, to show 
their love for people in any way that 
seems to them worth while. Social con- 
sciousness through its very hypersensi- 
tiveness becomes a polished surface of 
brass confining the love-desires of the 
soul to a dark and noisome dungeon of 
unconsciousness, all within the limits of a 
single person. No wonder, then, the agony 
beggars description ; no wonder fear reigns 
here supreme. 

It is now more clearly seen and compre- 
hended, I hope, why I said, in Chapter 
II, that all functional nervous disorders 
were diseases of the personality. What- 

72 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

ever may be the ultimate explanation, the 
immediate reason for the disorganization 
of personality which constitutes functional 
nervous diseases is the conflicts which may 
obtain between the social consciousness of 
an individual and his narrower, less con- 
scious, but deeper, more instinctive, and 
more violent wishes and desires. 

These energetic and violent, instinctive 
wishes and desires well up from out the 
very depths of the unconscious being, de- 
manding that their objects shall submit, 
even though the result should be social 
self-destruction. But, even yet more 
powerful than individual and narrow in- 
stinct is social instinct which leads to social 
consciousness ; and if this social conscious- 
ness is uninstructed and untrained and is 
unwise, and thinks the way to handle in- 
stincts of a lower order is by complete 
repression instead of socializing and thus 
spiritualizing them, the result is personal 
disaster which shows itself, sometimes, in 

73 



NERVOUSNESS 

mental disassociation or, in other words, 
a divided soul. 

The essence of the situation, thus, is 
conflict. And the conflict is between the 
social and the individual instincts. 

"The man's interior is a battle-ground," 
says James, "for what he feels to be two 
deadly hostile selves, one actual, the other 
ideal. As Victor Hugo makes his Ma- 
homet say : 

' Je suis le champ vil des sublimes combats : 
Tant6t l'homme d'en haut, et tantdt l'homme d'en bas ; 
Et le mal dans ma bouche avec le bien alterne, 
Comme dans le desert le sable et la citerne.'" * 

The two deadly hostile selves James 
speaks of, one actual and the other one 
ideal, are really the social and the more 
narrowly individual selves in a man; and 
while they do conflict, they need not, always, 
battle for individual supremacy, but, allow- 
ing each its proper place in the whole person- 
ality, the man may finally become unified 
and more or less harmonious in his soul. 

1 "The Varieties of Religious Experience", p. 171. 

74 



THE DIVIDED SOUL 

Now, personal relations, which consti- 
tute society, next to those things which 
interfere with life itself and cause the fear 
of death, are productive of the most power- 
ful emotions possible. In fact, in fancy, 
in either one or both, such powerful emo- 
tions are aroused sometimes by social 
consciousness as literally to prohibit clear 
thinking and reasonable action. Here is 
the secret of functional nervous disturb- 
ances : personal conflicts in reality or in 
imagination. The socially very sensitive 
person avoids discomfort by his exclusive- 
ness. This means that he separates him- 
self from all those other objectionable 
selves (or other people) so far as he is 
able. Carry this exclusiveness a little fur- 
ther, and we find that we have refused to 
associate with ourselves and have thus 
achieved division in our own souls. 



75 



Chapter V 
Hidden Equivalents in Nervousness 

MOST of my readers, I suppose, if 
they have had the patience and 
persistence to read as far as this, 
have seen that when nervous and emotional 
causes, personal and social conflicts, and 
secret conflicts confined within the limits 
of the individual soul can manifest such 
mysterious symptoms that they seem to 
be either physical, mental, or social, the 
significance and meaning of such symptoms 
is most completely hidden from the unso- 
phisticated mind. 

These meanings are not only hidden from 
the unsophisticated mind, but also from 
the professional mind, if it has not naturally 
a broad social outlook, coupled with experi- 
ence and training in psychological affairs. 

76 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

In my first chapter I quoted Richard 
Cabot as saying, "A man with heart dis- 
ease, tuberculosis, peritonitis, cancer, arte- 
riosclerosis, brain syphilis, may present 
the same symptoms as the neurasthenic." 
That is quite true. It is also true that the 
neurasthenic may present some of the symp- 
toms of any one, or any combination, of 
the above organic diseases. That is why 
so often the significance of certain symptoms 
is hidden. 

To be said to suffer from any particular 
disease, it is necessary to have all, or nearly 
all, of the symptoms of that disease. The 
reason the young medical student thinks 
he has all the diseases he studies is because 
he discovers some one, or perhaps even a 
few, of the symptoms of the diseases he 
fears. Later, he learns that to have some 
of the symptoms of a disease does not 
necessarily mean that he has the disease. 
Now what is true of the young student is 
also true of the rest of us. 

77 



NERVOUSNESS 

In the dread disease of epilepsy there 
are a number of more or less well-defined 
symptoms, the nature of which it will not 
be necessary to go into here. But if a 
person suffers from some of the usual mental 
accompaniments of epilepsy, without the 
physical convulsions, the mental symptoms 
are spoken of as epileptic equivalents. 

"An attack of mental disturbance may 
take the place of the convulsion and thus 
become an epileptic equivalent. These at- 
tacks of psychic epilepsy frequently take 
the form of so-called epileptic automatism or 
epileptic dream states. In these conditions 
the patient may do almost anything, and 
when he comes to himself he has absolutely 
no recollection of what has happened. 
Usually the attacks are of short duration 
and the acts rather simple — more simple 
than in the dream states of alcohol or 
hysteria. However, they may last for 
days, all sorts of things may be done." l 

1 Jelliffe and White, " Diseases of the Nervous System ", p. 674. 
78 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

In the same way, groups of physical, 
mental, or social symptoms may take the 
place of obvious nervousness. The wise 
doctor discovers these hidden substitutions 
and acts accordingly. 

Headaches are frequently substitutes for 
more serious nervous and social disturb- 
ances. This is especially true in that form 
of headache commonly called migraine. 
There seems to be some sort of relation 
between migraine, or migrainoid, attacks 
and epilepsy, although just what relation 
obtains is not known. From the point 
of view of equivalence it may well be that 
these attacks are in the nature of substi- 
tutes for convulsions. If that is the case, 
it is obvious that any one would rather 
have a headache, however severe, than an 
epileptic convulsion. 

The usual symptoms, and the order of 
their appearance, in true migraine, are these : 
First there are flashes of light in the eyes ; 
then an intense headache which is followed 

79 



NERVOUSNESS 

by nausea. Now, in many instances there 
are the flashes without the headache; or 
there may be both, without the nausea. 
From psychological studies not yet com- 
pletely carried out, it seems not improbable 
that these symptoms appear shortly after 
an emotional disturbance which consists 
of anger, or, perhaps, a slight rage, against 
a given situation, or person, repressed 
through fear. Therefore, instead of giving 
vent to the feelings proper, in acts or words 
appropriate to the feelings but most inap- 
propriate socially, the repressed feelings 
of anger or rage produce the symptoms. 
If this is true, as seems not unlikely, the 
flashes, or the headaches, take the place 
of some more or less violent tendency to 
social aggression. In other words, the 
flashes in my eyes may be an equivalent 
to a fight with my fists, or angry words 
expressed, the desire for which I repress 
through fear of consequences. Of course, 
all this is hidden from the one who suffers 

80 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

from such symptoms. He does not see the 
connection, perhaps because his emotions 
are so stirred up he can hardly see anything 
very clearly, and because the symptoms 
only follow some little time after the oc- 
currence of the event, or appearance of the 
idea, that initiated the anger or the rage. 
And the anger, or the rage itself, may be 
so slight in comparison with the fear of 
consequences if one should let himself 
express it, that it is entirely concealed 
from consciousness, and thus is safely 
hidden. 

In this way, then, peace is preserved, 
and the angry person also preserves his 
self-respect, which he would lose if he were 
to give vent socially to what he really felt. 
Thus, society is the gainer, while the patient 
suffers silently. And of course, in certain 
instances, it is perhaps much better so. 
But, what would be still better, if that were 
possible, would be to find some other form 
of expression for the anger, or so to organize 

81 



NERVOUSNESS 



the consciousness and conscious life that 
anger would not arise. 

In anger, fear, or rage, as we have already- 
seen through Doctor Cannon's work, there 
is almost instantly deposited in the blood 
through the action of the adrenal glands a 
substance called adrenalin, which increases 
blood sugar, - increases breathing capacity 
and circulation, and increases the rapidity 
of clotting of the blood. Now may it not 
be also true that the same emotions, if less 
intense and working on a nervous system 
less able to resist them, or to turn them to 
physical account, might manifest them- 
selves through such symptoms as scoto- 
mata, as the flashes before the eyes are 
called. Perhaps, indeed, these flashes are 
the result of the chemical elements injected 
into the blood by the increased secretions 
of internal glands like the adrenals. The 
proof of this, however, is the work of physi- 
ologists. The thing that interests the pa- 
tient is how he can be cured; and if we 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

have traced the causes of the trouble back 
to personal relations which in their turn 
cause anger, fear, or rage, the thing most 
obvious to do is so to live, and think, and 
act, that personal conflicts are avoided, 
won, or borne consciously and not repressed. 

The difficulty in handling cases which 
present both sets of symptoms — physical 
and nervous — lies in determining which 
causes the other, if thus connected; or, if 
there are two relatively separate processes 
going on, the difficulty lies in deciding which 
is more important, and in what proportion. 

Take the case of a highly nervous man 
who also has some slight, but actual, organic 
disturbance of his heart. The over- 
emphasizing of his heart trouble, in his 
mind, may quite conceal from him the real 
basis of his trouble in his present circum- 
stances. In other words, he hides himself 
behind his heart. Such a man may even 
deceive a skillful diagnostician and make 
him think his troubles wholly organic. Do 

83 



NERVOUSNESS 

not make the mistake, however, of thinking 
this is done with conscious willfulness. It 
is not. Rather, it is the result of nervous 
weakness and ignorance as to how to handle 
the situation. 

Thus it is with all physical symptoms 
caused by nervous, personal disturbances. 

A woman was unable to walk forwards, 
while yet she was able to walk backwards 
all right with something like a shuffle. 
This was a symptom of nervous, functional 
origin, as there is no known organic disease 
which could cause such a peculiar symptom. 
When its real significance was discovered, 
it was found that it symbolized a funda- 
mental characteristic of her personality, 
which was that she would do her duty as 
she found it, but she would not face it. So, 
through life, she had walked backwards, 
mentally, until she became dissociated, 
under the stress of her mother's death and 
conflicts with her brothers, when she ac- 
tually began to walk as she had thought. 

84 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

This transformation of nervous causes 
into physical effects is called hysterical 
conversion, and obviously is prolific of 
mysteriously hidden meanings of nervous 
symptoms. 

It is coming to be believed by many that 
symptoms seemingly very far removed 
from nervous origin really take their rise 
in such conditions. Asthma is one such 
symptom. It is really not unlikely, in 
some instances at least, that asthma is a 
symptom of a deeper, underlying, nervous 
condition which is thus concealed. The 
spasmodic contraction of the muscles con- 
cerned in breathing could conceivably be 
brought about by unconscious mental pro- 
cesses, inasmuch as any emotional disturb- 
ance whatsoever is instantly reflected nor- 
mally in breathing. If this is true, then 
here again we have a cunningly hidden 
substitute for some nervous symptom. Per- 
haps the physical agent employed is like 
that concerned in emotional glycosuria, 

85 



NERVOUSNESS 

about which we now know a great deal 
through Doctor Cannon's work already 
quoted, but psychoneurologically we have 
to go back finally to some personal relation, 
like conflict, to understand the conditions in 
which the symptoms take their origin. This 
increases greatly the possibilities of relief 
through proper psychotherapeutic measures. 

We now see even better why I insisted 
so very strongly, in Chapter I, on the 
need, at first, of a correct differential diag- 
nosis. Not only may a symptom mean 
some dangerous physical disease, but also 
it may hide some deeper nervous disturb- 
ance. But once the diagnosis is correctly 
made, and the patient is known to be suf- 
fering nervously, the obviously proper treat- 
ment is psychotherapeutic. 

Stuttering, more or less, is quite an ob- 
vious nervous symptom, but what is not 
so obvious is the nature of the nervousness 
it is symptomatic of. Sometimes, most 
assuredly, it hides an inner, personal dis- 

86 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

turbance due to social conflict. Indeed, 
inasmuch as speech is a social function 
altogether, what more natural than to seek 
for the causes of disturbances of speech in 
social relations, as well as in suspected 
brain anomalies? 

A well-known medical expert in speech 
disorders told me he knew a stutterer who 
never stuttered in the presence of the man 
she loved and married, but always stuttered 
in the presence of his rivals for her favor. 
It would be interesting to know whether 
her smooth prenuptial speech survived 
actual marriage and the inevitable personal 
conflicts which ensue. 

In such a case as this, where we are per- 
mitted to know more facts than usual, it 
is easy to see the hidden meaning of the 
stuttering. It concealed from all her lovers, 
except the one she loved herself, the fact 
that she did not return their love. And 
also it protected her from seeming obviously 
indifferent and hard-hearted. 

87 



NERVOUSNESS 

Now, what is true in one case may be 
also true in others. Stuttering, sometimes, 
may hide other nervous symptoms. 

One of the neatest ways of hiding the 
significance of a nervous symptom is by 
making it to appear to mean exactly op- 
posite from what it really does mean psy- 
chologically. For instance, a person who 
appears to be aggressive may really, in his 
heart, be meek as Moses. The opposite 
is also sometimes true. 

A man who once was teased almost be- 
yond endurance by a companion on a camp- 
ing expedition swung an ax around to 
cleave the skull of his tormentor. Luckily 
for both, it caught on a log of the wall of 
their camp, and in the moment's arrest of 
passion the possible victim of a murderous 
assault, terrified, escaped. This man does 
not quite know to this day whether, if his 
axe had not most providentially been 
caught, he would have committed murder. 

Now this man suffers, and has suffered 
88 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

long, from fear, in situations where nor- 
mally fear is inconceivable. The fear, 
however, in this case, sometimes masks 
an aggressive instinct, the force of which 
is measured in some slight degree by the 
above-mentioned act. What he really fears 
is no external situation, but himself, an 
instinct towards destruction if his self- 
control is lost. Perhaps the best way of 
expressing it would be to say he feared the 
loss of self-control. 

This does not mean, of course, that all 
fear means masked aggression. But it 
does mean that all fear is the result of 
repressed desire. The problem then be- 
comes, in any given instance, how to find 
out just what particular desire has been 
repressed. 

The significance of the symptom, then, 
becomes symbolical; it stands for some- 
thing else than what it seems. This is not 
difficult to see in simple instances, but in 
complicated cases the meaning, psycholog- 

89 



NERVOUSNESS 

ically, of the symptoms becomes quite 
obscure. 

A young woman suffered from fears of 
such severity that they were quite properly 
called phobias. These phobias were at- 
tached to such normally neutral acts and 
thoughts that on their face they really 
seemed absurd. After long and patient 
effort to elucidate their origins, however, 
it was found that they took rise, in part, 
in unconscious acts which, at first, were 
quite instinctive. The fears, then, were 
the substitutes for the unconscious in- 
stinctive tendencies which had become re- 
pressed. 

This is what I meant when I said that 
feelings and emotions could become de- 
tached from the ideas, or acts, or events 
they originally were associated with, and 
be reassembled, so to speak, with other 
circumstances they had no obvious connec- 
tion with : hence the mystery. 

There are many other mental symptoms 
90 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

which are hidden equivalents for nervous 
and social symptoms. Some are fear of 
elevators, fear of crowds, of large places, 
cars, and subways; their name is legion. 
Any fear, not obviously warranted, is but 
a mask for some nervous, deeper, under- 
lying condition not understood. 

Alcoholism, or the drug habit, may serve 
a similar purpose in concealing complexes. 
As Bernard Hart well says: "The artificial 
elation produced by alcohol, opium, and 
some other drugs, serves a similar purpose. 
The submerging of conflicts is, indeed, the 
chief object for which these drugs are taken, 
and this basic fact must be taken into ac- 
count in any efficient attempt to deal with 
the alcohol question." 1 

In a popular sense it has long been known 
that a drinking bout may often be a sub- 
stitute for a group of nervous symptoms. 
To escape something disagreeable the 
drinker turns to alcohol. Thus intoxica- 

1 Bernard Hart, "The Psychology of Insanity ", p. 108. 
91 



NERVOUSNESS 

tion may often be only an equivalent for 
some other form of nervous outbreak. This 
significance of the condition is usually lost 
sight of because it itself is accompanied by 
such socially unpleasant nervous symptoms. 
The social disturbance is so great that the 
psychological significance of the symptoms 
in the individual is covered up through 
confusion. 

A concrete illustration will show more 
clearly than exposition what I mean. 

A woman got into the habit of solitary 
drinking and went to a doctor for help. 
After talking with her, he, wisely, saw that 
her drinking had a psychological and per- 
sonal significance rather than physiological 
and advised her accordingly. 

The real reason the woman drank was to 
drown her personal sorrow. The mental 
state she could induce through alcohol 
acted as an equivalent for the mental state 
she had when she realized the actual con- 
ditions of her life. The mental state in- 

92 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

duced by the consciousness of reality was 
deep, though not pathological, depression. 
She drank to escape depression. 

It is the same in the case of epileptic 
equivalence. The mental state that takes 
the place of the convulsion saves the suf- 
ferer from some worse fate. This is true 
in all cases of nervous equivalence. The 
symptom, the meaning of which is hidden, 
more or less, saves the sufferer from some 
other symptom that seems to him to be 
worse, or likely to be worse. ■; 

It is probably the same with persons ad- 
dicted to the use of drugs. The mental 
state induced by drugs is sought for as a 
substitute for the desperation felt with full 
consciousness of reality. Reality, as they 
feel it, is more than such poor sufferers can 
bear. They do the only thing they know 
they can do to escape. 

Sometimes it is actually better to have 
the symptom one does have than to have 
the one it is a substitute for, as in the case 

93 



NERVOUSNESS 

of epilepsy. But sometimes it is not nec- 
essary to have either symptom, if the way 
out can be learned, as was done in the case 
of the woman who drank in solitary state. 
In other words, there sometimes is a cure 
for such conditions as we are speaking of 
here, even though the meaning of the symp- 
toms are hidden at first sight. 

The eczema, at least the excessive itch- 
ing and scratching, in the case I spoke of 
in the second chapter, was in the nature 
of a hidden equivalent for both nervous 
and social outbreaks. It was a substitute, 
so to speak, for telling the sister what she 
thought of her ; it took the place of telling 
her that she could not live with her and 
that she wished she would find another 
place to board. It also served notice on 
her father that his daughter needed help, 
and that by his marrying again at his 
advanced age, she no longer could have 
her needed summer's long vacation at his 
farm. All this took place because the in- 

94 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

herent capacity of the patient's nervous 
system was not capable, without instruc- 
tion, of bearing the troubles she was trying 
to go through with. 

A human being is a more or less organized 
system of energy. The thing that holds 
this energy in its place and prevents it 
running to waste, so to speak, is the nerv- 
ous system, and, above all, directing and 
controlling, is the social consciousness. 

If, now, the social consciousness is un- 
usually sensitive, and lays the cold and 
clammy finger of fear on individual initia- 
tive, instead of showing some socially de- 
sirable and individually satisfactory pur- 
pose to be worked out, the inner energy of 
life becomes diverted from its normal chan- 
nels of flow, and so of expression and relief, 
and then manifests itself in partial ways 
and in unsuspected places. 

If it shows itself in some unusual and 
hidden place on or in the body itself, we 
get the physical symptoms, some of which 

95 



NERVOUSNESS 

I have already spoken of. If it shows itself 
in some unusual mode of thought, or mis- 
placed or disproportionate emotion, or ab- 
normal act of will, we get the mental symp- 
toms which are so annoying and alarming. 
And if it show itself in purely social ab- 
normalities, we get the social symptoms so 
generally deplored, and also so distressing 
to the individual. 

The central difficulty of all who suffer 
in such ways as these lies in the torpidity, 
so to speak, of their socially creative imagi- 
nation. They cannot think, without in- 
struction, what it is they ought to do. 
They vividly imagine, but even here un- 
consciously and in dreams, what they would 
like to do, but are not able, without help, 
so to adjust their wishes to the actual out- 
side world as to achieve their purposes. 

But yet they want, with all their con- 
scious mind and thought, to serve society. 
Their social instinct is so strong they never 
think it possible that they have individual 



HIDDEN EQUIVALENTS IN NERVOUSNESS 

instincts which may conflict with social 
organization, and so their inner feelings 
and desires are hidden from them ; hidden 
not only from the sufferer himself but also 
from his friends and, it may be, even from 
his doctor to whom he turns at last in des- 
peration. 

We easily, now, see why. The symptoms 
are not what they seem. They are hidden 
equivalents for something else. They take 
the place of social service, maybe; or slip 
into the place of proper feeling, acting, 
willing; or conceal themselves behind the 
most mysterious physical disturbances. 

The thing to do then in such situations 
as these is to release these deep, unconscious 
feelings and emotions from their enchant- 
ment, and waken them to the broad, full 
light of social consciousness where they can 
then see clearly what to do and how to 
serve. 



97 



Chapter VI 

Treatment: Analysis; Moral Education; 
Personal and Social Organization 

ALREADY my readers will have 
foreseen that the proper treatment 
for such troubles as we have been 
considering is first to find out the psycholog- 
ical meaning of the symptoms. 

If symptoms are hidden equivalents; 
if in the divided soul one part does not know 
what the other part is doing, or proposes to 
do; if everything is seen as in a dream, 
darkly; obviously we should analyze out 
the important tendencies, instincts, and 
concealed desires, and see just what it is 
that is at the bottom of the trouble. 

In many instances, analyzing out, and 
bringing up clearly into consciousness, the 

98 



TREATMENT 

unconscious instincts and desires and their 
inevitable conflicts is quite sufficient to 
permit recovery. 

The woman whose symptoms of nausea 
and dizziness came on in a dream was seen 
only three times. As soon as she saw her 
real trouble was due to the repression of an 
unconscious desire to desert her husband, 
and that her symptoms were but the natu- 
ral feelings of one who has disgust at her 
own desires, she entirely recovered. Having 
the conflict quite consciously in mind, she 
also was quite competent to control it. 
Only so long as she did not know what was 
the matter was she the victim of her symp- 
toms. 

As we have seen in our chapter on dreams, 
dreams are the symbolical expression of 
repressed desires. Keeping this fact in 
mind, it is easy enough to see what the re- 
pressed desires are of a woman who dreams 
she is being lured away from loyalty to a 
husband whom she loves but feels also is a 

99 



NERVOUSNESS 

failure financially. If she herself can be 
brought to see what the real issue is, and 
has moral strength, she recovers forthwith. 
Such was the case recounted above. 

Fundamentally, the desires or wishes, 
which may get repressed, are instincts. 
Now instincts are of two orders : first, they 
are individual ; second, they are social. 
It is the conflict between these two orders 
of instincts which consciousness sometimes 
refuses to consider, and therefore represses. 
This does not mean, however, that the 
conflict has been settled; it only means 
that it has become unconscious. Hence, 
the first thing to do in treatment is to make 
the conflict conscious, so that it may be 
seen what really is best to do. 

If the social instinct is very powerful, 1 
and the individual instinct is equally power- 
ful, or almost so, there may be a battle 
royal, shown by symptoms, and conscious- 

1 See W. Trotter's book, " Instincts of the Herd in Peace and 
War." 

100 



TREATMENT 

ness know almost nothing of what it is all 
about. 

A man whose social instinct took a very 
high and pure religious form was in mental 
agony at certain individually instinctive 
thoughts, because he regarded them as 
blasphemous. 

All that was needed for his complete re- 
covery was for him to realize, concretely, 
that his instinct for logical thinking was 
justified, and by proper expression satis- 
fied, all of which was quite compatible with 
the highest and best of religious feelings. 
A large part of his real difficulty lay in his 
lack of education, which circumstances 
had forbidden, but which he had yearned 
and longed for all his life. 

The form his symptoms took was fear. 
He was afraid that he was becoming pre- 
maturely senile, and might end his life insane. 
But nothing could be much more improbable, 
for the very form his symptoms took practi- 
cally rendered such an end impossible. Of 
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NERVOUSNESS 

course, not being much experienced in 
matters psychological, he could not know 
this, and was disproportionately alarmed. 

A young girl had a bad headache which a 
little investigation showed to be associated 
with the disturbances inevitably connected 
with moving from one town to another, 
under circumstances in which she had to 
take almost entire charge and responsibility, 
because her father was helpless and almost 
bedridden, and her mother so helpless in 
the face of necessary decisions that she un- 
loaded prematurely almost all her own 
personal burdens on her daughter. 

She had not associated her headaches 
with her mental conflicts, but thought they 
were due to some organic trouble. Just 
a little talk about her attitude was sufficient 
to clear the situation somewhat, and with 
the relief that comes with a better under- 
standing of cause and effect in the mental 
world, there came relief from the headache 
also, as it totally disappeared. 

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TREATMENT 

As the essence of the trouble in these 
cases is mental disassociation, just to be- 
come conscious of the connection between 
cause and effects, in the emotional field, 
is sometimes sufficient. Consciousness is 
connection, in the mental realm, of parts 
that may be disconnected, and so uncon- 
scious. To make these parts conscious 
is to bring them at the same time under 
the rule of right reason, to a certain degree 
in any case. This is sometimes true in 
cases even much more severe than those 
I have already spoken of, as the following 
account will show. 

A young man suffered from attacks so 
severe as totally to interrupt his work. 
They were of a convulsive nature, and while 
he was in one, his consciousness was at such 
low ebb as to lead an inexperienced observer 
to the opinion that he was quite unconscious. 
Except for the fact that he did show some 
signs of consciousness, and also because 
the attacks lasted so long, his trouble might 
103 



NERVOUSNESS 

have been diagnosed as epilepsy. It was 
not epilepsy, however, but hysterical in 
its nature. 

When he came to, he had no immediate 
recollection of what had happened, and 
under ordinary circumstances completely 
forgot everything except the fact that he 
had had an attack. Under careful and 
patient questioning it developed that while 
he was in his attack he vividly imagined 
he saw a beautiful woman with flowing hair, 
standing in flames, with outstretched arms, 
imploring him to come and save her. 

When asked what he thought all this 
might mean, he said, "It may mean that I 
am being tempted to be disloyal to my wife 
and family." And when he realized, as 
he shortly did, that that was really what the 
vision meant, he had but to see it to repu- 
diate it, and from that time forth was cured. 

The woman who had a similar tempta- 
tion to be disloyal to her husband was not 
so strongly tempted, nor had she so deeply 
104 



TREATMENT 

repressed her wayward tendencies, so her 
symptoms were correspondingly lighter. In 
both cases, however, the patients needed 
but to see the situation to be able to handle 
it successfully themselves without further 
help. 

The treatment here consisted merely in 
bringing to quite clear consciousness the 
different instinctive factors involved. The 
patients' philosophy of life had been to put 
disagreeable thoughts out of mind, repress 
them, in fact, and try to go ahead, though 
blindly. In a way, the very analysis itself 
was an education in a better philosophy of 
life in which the wisdom of seeing clearly 
the elements involved was demonstrated 
by immediate relief and almost immediate 
recovery. 

The mistake such patients make in their 
philosophy is to think that consciousness 
should be in the nature of a cement surface, 
hard enough to resist undamaged the slings 
and arrows of circumstance and serve like 
105 



NERVOUSNESS 

a shell to keep in the instinctive individual 
tendencies. Consciousness really should 
rather be like a transparent medium through 
which one may look in every direction, 
inwardly as well as outwardly, so that one 
may direct his course through life freely, 
unbound by deep feelings and hidden im- 
pulses, blind instincts, the total meaning 
of which, both socially and individually, 
he does not know. 

A man sometimes suffered from the sudden 
disappearance of words when he was read- 
ing. When he took the trouble to look 
back and see what the words were that dis- 
appeared, he found invariably that they 
were words that suggested unpleasant, un- 
conscious memories and ideas, that his 
consciousness had refused to see, so to speak, 
and so had totally ignored. After he had 
returned and had seen the words, by no 
effort of the imagination or conscious act 
of will could he make them again disappear. 
His symptom was cured simply by an act 
106 



TREATMENT 

of attention that forced consciousness to 
face what instinctively it had shirked. 

Thus consciousness may be said to be 
like an infinite number of photographic 
shutters in a field of vision, or tower of 
observation, which open and shut instinct- 
ively with reflex action, unless ordered 
open by a higher authority. 
[ The law of their action is pleasure and 
pain. Anything that pleases they open to 
receive; to anything displeasing they in- 
stantly close. 

The first step, then, in the treatment of 
such conditions is to encourage and assist 
the patient to keep his conscious vision clear 
and open, in defiance to his instinct, which 
is to shirk the sight ; and then help him to 
understand the meaning of what he sees. 

As I said in a previous chapter, I use 
these rather extreme examples as illustra- 
tions, because through them the real issue 
becomes much clearer. The same prin- 
ciples obtain, however, in cases so slight 
107 



NERVOUSNESS 

as almost to escape observation. For in- 
stance, the man who felt depressed and had 
a "sinking feeling", and who was found 
to have lost by fire his house and much of 
what he owned, needed only a little en- 
couragement to face bravely his material 
loss, and with that act came courage and 
recovery. Of course he had his moments 
of depression and sinking feelings of fear 
of the future, as who does not, but they no 
longer terrified him, and he did not think 
his world had ended. 

A man who felt depressed at times was 
found to have lost his father and mother a 
few years before and dreamed of them every 
night. Underneath a successful business 
exterior, he longed to be a child again, and 
in his dreams he was. Just one conversa- 
tion about it all and what it signified in 
terms of concealed desire was sufficient to 
give him back again the virile instinct of 
aggression which had helped him to his 
business success. 

108 



TREATMENT 

But sometimes the situations are not 
quite so simple, and sometimes the patients 
do not see so immediately the relation be- 
tween their repressed feelings and their 
symptoms. In other words, the symbol- 
isms of the symptoms may be much more 
complex, and the habit of repression so 
firmly fixed that it is very difficult to over- 
come it, and see consciously and clearly 
all the connections necessary for the as- 
sociation of disassociated elements. In such 
cases as these it takes much longer to dis- 
cover what the symptoms really do mean 
symbolically, as the expression of uncon- 
scious impulses, and the patient himself 
needs education in controlling and manag- 
ing the wayward tendencies of his mind. 

In these cases, however, the principles 
of treatment remain practically the same. 
It only takes longer to reach the same re- 
sults. 

The fundamental thing to realize is that 
the patient is doing the best he can and 
109 



NERVOUSNESS 

deserves the deepest sympathy, for his 
suffering is perhaps the worst kind of suf- 
fering human beings are sometimes called 
on to endure. This requires great patience 
during the treatment. 

# One of the deepest desires of a sick person 
is to be a child again, protected and cared 
for by his parents. Courage is especially 
hard when one does not know what, where, 
or who are his foes. Dreams will show 
this tendency to return to childhood, and 
if the patient knows this, his fear is robbed 
of half its terror, for he knows then at least 
one thing that he must do. 

A young man had suffered much from 
neurasthenic symptoms. His dreams 
showed that he longed for his mother who 
was dead. When he found that much of 
his nervousness was due to lack of courage 
to face the difficulties of his life, both at 
home and in his work; that his longing for 
his mother was so strong it interfered with 
a whole-hearted love for his wife ; that his 

110 



TREATMENT 

desire to be young again and be protected 
was preventing him from doing his best 
in his business ; — when he saw all this, he 
pulled himself together, as the saying is, 
and met his life bravely, like a man. 

But courage and bravery is something 
that ebbs and flows. After a few weeks, 
at first, he would fall back into his old in- 
stinctive way of feeling, and, discouraged, 
would again seek help. 

Every time, however, it would turn out 
that he was longing for his mother ; wishing 
he were a child again without responsibility. 
He would laugh when he saw how invari- 
ably that was the case, and go off relieved. 

Weeks changed to months, finally, before 
he would come back again for a deeper 
understanding, relief, and encouragement. 
Finally he was able, himself, to unravel to 
a considerable degree his mental and emo- 
tional snarls, and seldom showed up for 
external assistance. 

Now this was a case which needed a more 
111 



NERVOUSNESS 

or less lengthy moral education, to enable 
the patient to get such a grip on himself 
that he was not easily wrenched away by 
force of circumstances, subjective or objec- 
tive. 

James says, somewhere, that the essen- 
tial act of morality consists in holding the 
better and higher idea in the focus of at- 
tention, as against the allurements of other 
ideas, until it gets itself acted out in reality. 
This is exactly what an analysis of the more 
or less unconscious desires and instincts 
does. It trains the mind to look, to face 
courageously, and see clearly what the in- 
stinctive impulses are, and where they would 
lead one if they were followed. To see 
clearly, then, is the first moral act. 

But vision is tiresome, sight soon wearies, 
and then one sinks back into instinctive 
action, which is all right just so long, and 
only so long, as outer and inner circum- 
stances are also all right. Since outer and 
inner circumstances never are all right for 

112 



TREATMENT 

long, instinctive action soon gets one "in 
bad", as the phrase is, and then comes the 
need for consciousness to stop and take 
account of stock again. Here is where a 
capacity for social consciousness is neces- 
sary, for otherwise the social instinct merely 
conflicts, head on, with the individual in- 
stincts, and there is distress. 

This is why it is so necessary, sometimes, 
to follow up the first analysis with a more 
or less prolonged mental training in the 
facing of unorganized and unconscious par- 
tial impulses. 

Clearly, the more severe the symptoms 
are, the longer it is likely to take to bring 
about a lasting recovery. But more than 
mere time is necessary. 

Let me tell a little about a case in which 
the symptoms were so severe as to lead 
some to believe the patient was insane. It 
was not insanity, however, that the patient 
suffered from, although the acts were in- 
sane acts. 

113 



NERVOUSNESS 

Assuming, as was afterwards proved, 
that the energy behind the acts must be 
tremendous to produce such results, the 
patient first was helped to see the real inner, 
deep significance of the symptoms. But 
this alone, quite obviously, was not enough, 
so social opportunity was procured that 
personal and social development might be 
possible. 

Now came success, steadily increasing 
as time went on, and the only added as- 
sistance was some slight help, from time 
to time, in gaining a clearer, ever clearer, 
social consciousness. Two things were nec- 
essary for this success : personal insight 
and social opportunity ; both being present, 
recovery followed as a matter of course; 
either being absent, failure would have 
followed necessarily. 

Analysis, moral education, personal and 
social organization, all are necessary in 
any case where the symptom is obsessive 
thinking or acting tantamount to insanity. 

114 



TREATMENT 

Since insanity implies a lack of insight 
as to the origin of the insane ideas, it is 
obviously futile to try to dispel such ideas 
until the patient has been led to see their 
source. 

The source of all ideas is social experience. 
An insane idea, then, is merely an idea 
driven on with such volume and pressure 
of emotion that it is no longer amenable 
to the necessary criticism of social con- 
sciousness. The first step, then, in the 
psychic treatment of any form of insanity 
amenable to such treatment consists in 
getting the patient to be willing to look at 
his ideas socially, objectively, at first with- 
out the slightest criticism, until he gains 
the power to face his ideas in their entirety. 

At first, since his ideas take their source 
in such deep and powerful emotions, he 
can hardly bear to look at them at all, his 
feelings overwhelming his clear vision. 

Little by little, however, if the analyst 
is very careful not to offend, the patient 
115 



NERVOUSNESS 

may finally gain the courage to look and 
see what he may see. The first great battle 
now is won, and sooner or later the abnormal 
intensity of emotion subsides, until finally, 
one day, the patient not knowing why, his 
ideas may fall into their appointed place 
in the total social structure, and he now has 
insight and can criticize his own ideas and 
see them rationally related to the outside 
world of personal realities. 

Why ideas should take their origins in 
social emotions, and how it is emotions can 
give being to ideas, is a question no one 
now can answer. Perhaps such questions 
never can be answered. The important 
thing to know is that they do, because, if 
you wish to change ideas, you must first 
prepare the soil for transplantation, for 
otherwise your ideas will not take root. 

Perhaps here is another good way to de- 
scribe insanity. The insane person wishes 
to think as he does, for what are to him 
good and quite sufficient reasons. But, 
116 



TREATMENT 

really, his reasons are his feelings, and he 
stakes them as against the whole external 
world. The sane person, then, is he who 
is willing, nay, not only willing but actually 
desirous of the chance to test his thinking 
by a comparison of it with the thinking of 
his compeers, and tests both by the value 
of their results for social consciousness. 

The patient of whom I have already 
spoken, who had delusions, followed just 
the course I have outlined above in her 
recovery. At first she would not even face 
her thoughts in their entirety, but as she 
caught a glimpse of them fled terrified, 
mentally speaking, to her delusions. But 
after a while she really did become quite 
willing, though still most timorous, to face 
her thoughts throughout their whole sig- 
nificance, and was very much surprised to 
find that pari passu her whole external 
world of social relationships had completely 
changed its aspect from one of condemna- 
tion to commendation. 
117 



NERVOUSNESS 

Now she was amenable to social thinking 
and capable to some degree of logical self- 
critique. 

The next steps that she took were self- 
initiated, and were in the direction of per- 
sonal and of social organization. And now 
she could see that her delusions were de- 
lusions ; she had insight ; and more and 
more she strove for socialized expression. 
Thus was her cure complete. 

The very fact that the patient seeks for 
help shows a striving of the social instinct 
to escape the thraldom of individual instinct. 
Lucky it is for the patient if he finds a per- 
son willing to accept the duty thus imposed, 
for its acceptance implies a willingness to 
put the patient's needs in the foreground 
and serve as a sort of social consciousness, 
and in all personal relations set a sort of 
social standard. 

This necessarily implies a high degree of 
social consciousness and clear vision, be- 
cause the instinctive tendency is always 

118 



TREATMENT 

to respond to emotional situations and per- 
sonal relations emotionally. 

What I mean is illustrated by the almost 
universal tendency we feel to argue with a 
person who may happen, for some reason 
quite unknown to us, to harbor a delusion. 
From our superior position of social sanity 
we see the social falsity of the delusion, 
and our first instinctive tendency is to 
deny its social truth and in the heat of 
our denial include also its symbolic truth 
of individual instinct, and start forthwith 
to argue. 

Nothing could be more fatal to success in 
treatment. For instead of calming, some- 
what, the troubled waters of emotion, so 
that the ship of normal social intercourse 
might mind its helm and we could direct 
its course, in some degree at least, according 
to a chart and compass, we stir up a tem- 
pest where at worst, before, there was only 
a gale, though highly dangerous. 

These observations are also true for the 
119 



NERVOUSNESS 

simplest case of nervousness, or emotional 
disturbance. 

Now comes the third and final stage of 
treatment : personal assistance in social 
organization, and training in the sacrifice 
of a narrowly contracted conception of the 
self, and in the exercise of whole-hearted 
submission to, and execution of, a socialized 
and spiritualized ideal of life and personal 
relations. 

The thing that should be avoided here, 
above all, is any attempt, conscious or un- 
conscious, to impose an ideal or concrete 
plan of action on the patient. The patient 
should be free to make his choice himself, 
the only thing required being that he be as 
fully conscious as is possible of all the social 
consequences of a chosen course of action. 

But once a patient makes a choice in the 
full light of social consciousness, he should 
be helped by social approbation and, so 
far as possible, by personal assistance. 
Thus actual disinterested assistance to the 

no 



TREATMENT 

patient in helping him to accomplish his 
own chosen social aims will prevent, per- 
haps, a premature despair at the difficulty 
always met in attempting to live a more or 
less disinterested social life. 

The patient must be helped to see that 
no matter how inferior he may regard him- 
self in comparison with other, healthy 
persons, his own inner personality has a 
value in itself which he must protect against 
aggression. Then he can use it, within 
the limits of his power, for social purposes. 
To be of any social use whatever, one must 
first be, to a certain extent, self-reliant. 
To find one's self respected is the first step 
to self-respect. 

" To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 

This is just as true of the inner world 
of the mind as it is of the outer world of 
society and personal relations. 

The fact of the matter is that the patient 
121 



NERVOUSNESS 

is a patient because he has been unable to 
meet the demands of society and also over- 
come its natural obstructions. Society, 
as a whole, cares nothing for individuals. 
If individuals do what it demands and do 
not do what it prohibits, it is satisfied and 
lets the individual live. But if the individ- 
ual is not able, for some reason or other, to 
meet its demands, it allows the individual 
to die. 

On the other hand, just to meet the de- 
mands of society means considerable ag- 
gression and individual initiative in order 
to overcome the resistance society makes 
to anything which in the least degree con- 
flicts with what it considers should be done 
for its benefit. 

Here then is a perennial conflict in which 
the individual must protect his own per- 
sonal integrity but must also work satis- 
factorily in some sort of service to society. 
The nervously sick person is one who is 
sometimes unable to protect himself against 
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TREATMENT 

the aggressions of others and so is driven 
in upon himself, although what he really 
wants to do is to work somehow for some- 
body else. 

Sometimes, also, the nervously sick per- 
son is sick because he cannot discover what 
he can do that would be accepted socially 
as worthy of any sort of personal remuner- 
ation. 

Civilization is making heavier and heavier 
demands on its individual members, and 
those who cannot, or who do not know how 
to, meet those demands, are subjected to a 
nervous strain that frequently they cannot 
stand, hence become sick. 

Thus it becomes even clearer that the 
origin of functional nervous disorders is 
in the conflict, the inevitable conflict, be- 
tween social instincts and individual, par- 
tial instincts, which are more or less un- 
conscious. 

The way out, and therefore the cure, 
consists in meeting all the instincts and 
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NERVOUSNESS 

learning just what they are and their bio- 
logical purpose ; then training these in- 
stinctive impulses to social forms satis- 
factory, more or less, to others ; and finally 
so organizing one's self personally and 
socially as to serve the highest and most 
spiritual personal and social relations. 

The completeness and permanence of 
the recovery, therefore, will depend on the 
extent to which this is possible in any par- 
ticular case. 



124 



Chapter VII 
Prevention: Childhood; Marriage 

SINCE functional nervous disorders are 
due to repressed complexes, the way 
to prevent such disturbances is to 
prevent the formation of complexes. Now 
a complex is formed by the repression of 
emotional experiences, or emotional ideas, 
or both ; therefore to prevent the formation 
of complexes it is necessary to prevent re- 
pression. Repression tends to begin in 
childhood, and that is why a first step in the 
prevention of future possible psychoneuroses 
should be taken at that time. 

The way repression starts is this : The 

child is a bundle of activities, some of which 

are useful to him and to society, and some 

of which are not. Parents, other children, 

125 



NERVOUSNESS 

and nurses are his society, and they decide 
which of his experimental moves shall be 
permitted and which not. Those which 
are not permitted are punished, in one way 
or another. Thus the child gradually learns 
what he may and what he may not do, 
without incurring the displeasure of his 
personal environment. Thus, too, the un- 
conscious memories of past punishments 
become repressing forces which keep down 
natural, instinctive tendencies. 

If these instinctive tendencies are kept 
in check merely by blind fear, they become 
separated from consciousness, and thus 
are no longer amenable to conscious control 
but become complexes, ruled only by force, 
and manifesting themselves by symptoms 
of one sort or another. 

Therefore the way to prevent complexes 
forming is to substitute for fear, in the 
control of instincts, conscious understanding 
and socially satisfactory self-direction and 
development. This means, of course, the 
126 



PREVENTION 

providing of proper and adequate oppor- 
tunity for the development of instincts, and 
training in the higher forms of expression. 

One of the most significant aspects of 
nervousness and functional nervous dis- 
turbance is the prolongation of infantile 
instincts into adult life. To be concrete, 
the instinct of sucking sometimes is pro- 
longed in youth, and we have the child who 
has to be dismissed from school because he 
persists in sucking his thumb. This child 
is laying the foundation for a future nervous 
disturbance, indigestion, at least, if by 
great good luck nothing more serious ensues. 

But such a habit has worse effects than 
possible indigestion. It drafts off from the 
use of the higher centers of the brain the 
nervous energy needed for mental work, so 
necessary in our complex modern civiliza- 
tion, and substitutes for the satisfactions 
of serviceable work accomplished, the im- 
mediate sense satisfactions and pleasures 
of functional activity without any other 
127 



NERVOUSNESS 

result. This also leads to excessive irri- 
tability and a refusal to respond to natural, 
normal social demands, as a result of which 
the unfortunate individual becomes socially 
impossible. 

Now, a vicious circle once established 
tends to perpetuate itself, and for the loss 
of friends is substituted the sense satis- 
factions found within oneself. This may 
lead to a sort of whirlpool of sensations in 
the vortex of which one might sink into 
insanity. 

Obviously the time to limit the sucking 
instinct is during the nursing period. The 
infant needs to nurse to get nourishment, 
but being an infant he does not know that 
and will suck anything, hence at this time 
he must be controlled externally. Later, 
if he shows signs of reverting to the sucking 
stage, his reason may be called into play, 
and he may be instructed as to why that 
instinct should be strictly limited. 

If we pass over those stages of personal 
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PREVENTION 

development during which the child is 
taught to control various other physiologi- 
cal processes, we come to his social relations 
to his playmates and parents. Now we 
come to the problems of punishment. 

Obviously the individual has to be trained 
to become a possible member of society. 
Aggressive and cruel instincts have to be 
curbed, and their motive power directed 
to higher aims : the question is, how intense 
shall be the punishments that curb ; and 
how shall the motives be transformed from 
lower to higher ends ? 

Here is the case of a child who showed 
tremendous desire for knowledge, a desire 
that led him to act most cruelly. Because 
of the cruelty of his act, his father whipped 
him terribly. Because his craving for 
knowledge was punished so severely, he 
became afraid, all the rest of his life, to 
know face to face, and first hand, the con- 
sequences of many acts, and so became 
very repressed ; and worst of all the un- 
129 



NERVOUSNESS 

conscious influence of that early terrible 
thrashing for what to him was but a desire 
for knowledge, kept him from going to 
college and getting an education com- 
mensurate with his desires and his abilities. 

What happened was this : At the age of 
four, about, he caught a frog and gouged 
out its eyes in an attempt to find out what 
was behind them that enabled the frog to 
see. It was for this cruel act that he was 
so terribly punished. But he did not 
think of it as cruel. He was only four 
years old. He was curious. He wanted 
to know what was behind those brilliant 
eyes. Yet he must be punished. He must 
not be allowed to grow up with the idea 
that he could follow his curiosity, no matter 
through what cruelty it might lead him. 
Now what was to be done ? 

In the light of what we know now, we 

see that his punishment was too severe. 

Punished, to some degree, he certainly 

should be, because he must have had some 

130 



PREVENTION 

idea that he was causing pain, and his act 
showed that he did not care if he were. 
But being punished so severely with no 
adequate explanation, and no sympathy 
being shown for that part of his act which 
was admirable, — the seeking after knowl- 
edge, — his tendency towards cruelty was 
only repressed through fear and in no 
way transformed or idealized ; thus was 
laid the foundation for a future nervous 
breakdown. 

Now, of course, there is a deeper problem 
here. A boy, who at the age of four shows 
a callousness such as this boy showed to 
the pain and suffering of another being, 
even though that being be a frog, might 
easily become a fiend in society if his cruelty 
instinct were allowed to develop unre- 
stricted. Perhaps, therefore, nothing less 
than such severe punishment would have 
held him in check. The problem, then, is 
this : Which is better, a patient who is 
nervously sick because of a repressed instinct 
131 



NERVOUSNESS 

toward cruelty, or a healthy person who 
causes a great deal of suffering to others 
through his cruelty ? 

Without attempting to answer this hypo- 
thetical question, in this particular concrete 
case there was a tertium quid. 

This man has always wanted to be a 
doctor and surgeon, since he was old enough 
to know what he wanted at all in the way 
of work. But his desire for knowledge was 
repressed, and he turned to business instead. 
Now if he had gone to college and medical 
school, his coolness and nerve in the pres- 
ence of situations which might have en- 
tirely upset another would have been ad- 
vantageous to him, and controlled by 
knowledge and the ultimate desire to help, 
he might have made a splendid surgeon. 
Thus, both he and society might have 
benefited by the training and utilization 
of the personal quality shown by his infan- 
tile anatomical investigations. 

Personal and moral education, then, is 
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PREVENTION 

the way to prevent possible future functional 
nervous breakdowns. The reason is simple. 
Such education provides adequate forms of 
expression, of a socially serviceable sort, 
for instinctive tendencies which if not 
provided for will tend to wreck the person 
who possesses them ; and it also provides 
normally adequate barriers against socially 
and personally destructive tendencies which 
unless controlled would result in self- 
destruction. 

There is another type of person than the 
one I have been considering, who requires 
different treatment as a child in order to 
prevent possible future nervous disturb- 
ances. This is the very shy and sensitive 
child who is easily overwhelmed and crushed 
socially, and needs much encouragement to 
show his real abilities. 

Such a child shrinks and contracts and 
retires into himself, so to speak, and the 
energies which should be used in doing 
things worth while are actually wasted in 

133 



NERVOUSNESS 

the creation of phantasies, day-dreams, and 
self -stimulation. 

Now the way to prevent this is to provide 
adequate opportunity, that the child will 
regard as satisfactory, for the social use of 
his powers, even though they may be less 
than those of many of his comrades; and, 
on the other hand, to see to it that his 
comrades do not overpower him with their 
greater vigor. With a little early protec- 
tion and special opportunity, a child may 
be carried through a critical stage of nervous 
and mental development and become quite 
self-reliant where, without it, he might be- 
come later a nervous wreck. 

A man who late in life became hypo- 
chondriacal had a history of being badly 
treated by his father in his childhood, and 
of not being given adequate educational 
opportunities. If he had not had these 
early difficulties to contend with, there is 
every reason to believe, from the nature 
of his trouble and the ease with which it 
134 



PREVENTION 

was relieved, that he not only would never 
have become nervously disturbed, but that 
he would have made an even greater per- 
sonal success of his life than he has, although 
that has been very good. 
I This shows how necessary it is for parents 
to act correctly if they wish their children 
to develop normally. And obviously, to 
act correctly, parents should know about 
the essential elements of character, how 
they function and how they develop, and 
how to control and train character. All 
this, of course, is a matter of psychology, 
meaning wisdom in living. 
| One of the most important discoveries 
made through the study of the childhood of 
nervous people is the influence of the parent 
on the child. Jung * shows through a 
study of associations how a mother and her 
daughter are identified. He gave them 
separately the same series of words to which 

1 Jung, C. G., "Lectures and Addresses ", Clark University, 
p. 65. 

135 



NERVOUSNESS 



they responded by telling him the first 
word that occurred to them when they heard 
the word he gave. I will quote him : 



Stimulus Wore 


> Mother 


Daughter 


to pay 


diligent pupil 


pupil 


attention 






law 


command of God Moses 


dear 


child 


father and 
mother 


great 


God 


father 


potato 


bulbous root 


bulbous root 


family 


many persons 


five persons 


strange 


traveller 


traveller 


brother 


dear to me 


dear 


to kiss 


mother 


mother 


burn 


great pain 


painful 


door 


wide 


big 


hay 


dry 


dry 


month 


many days 


thirty-one 
days 


air 


cool 


moist 


fruit 


sweet 


sweet 


merry 


happy child 
136 


child 



PREVENTION 

"One might indeed think that in this 
experiment, where full scope is given to 
chance, individuality would become a factor 
of the utmost importance, and that there- 
fore one might expect a very great diversity 
and lawlessness of associations. But as we 
see, the opposite is the case. Thus the 
daughter lives contentedly in the same circle 
of ideas as her mother, not only in her 
thought but in her form of expression ; 
indeed, she even uses the same words." 

This is not, however, necessarily wrong. 
It only illustrates the tremendous power 
the parent has over the child, a power only 
the greater because it is so subtle and so 
permanent. Jung goes on and says : 

"It is not the good and pious precepts, 
nor is it any other inculcation of pedagogic 
truths that have a molding influence upon 
the character of the developing child, but 
what most influences him is the peculiarly 
affective state which is totally unknown 
to his parents and educators. The con- 
137 



NERVOUSNESS 

cealed discord between the parents, the 
secret worry, the repressed hidden wishes, 
all these produce in the individual a certain 
affective state with its objective signs which 
slowly but surely, though unconsciously, 
works its way into the child's mind, 
producing therein the same conditions 
and hence the same reactions to external 
stimuli." 

Obviously to make the best use of any 
given piece of mechanism, organism, or 
personality, one must know how to direct it, 
or to repair it if it gets out of adjustment. 
Thus is it necessary in repairing, or prevent- 
ing, personal derangements which lead to 
nervousness, to know the origin, nature, and 
laws of development of personality. 

At the beginning of this chapter I said 
that the memories of past punishments be- 
came repressing forces which kept down 
natural, instinctive tendencies. To the 
socially very sensitive child, however, 
ordinary punishment is not necessary to 

138 



PREVENTION 

create repression. The mere idea of social 
disapprobation is sufficient to check the 
normal development of the active instincts, 
because inevitably they come in conflict 
with the active instincts of others, and the 
sensitive child shrinks back before the more 
aggressive displeasure of his playmates 
when they do not get just what they want. 

Now when the sensitive child shrinks into 
himself, he substitutes phantasies and day- 
dreams, in act or in imagination, for the 
active participation in the realities of daily 
life, so necessary for normal personal de- 
velopment. This is the beginning of what 
much later, perhaps, manifests itself as a 
nervous breakdown. 

When such a shrinking into himself, or 
introversion, to use the more technical 
term, is first noticed, the parents should 
endeavor to find out what the child is 
thinking about. Indeed, the first thing 
parents should do if they wish to prevent 
possible future nervous or mental break- 
139 



NERVOUSNESS 

downs in their children is to learn, if they 
can, in intimate detail, what really is going 
on in their minds. 

A child is an instinctive adept at con- 
cealing what he is really thinking of, 
especially if he thinks his thoughts are going 
to be in the least degree criticized. To him 
thoughts are acts, and as he knows some of 
his acts will be criticized he is equally 
fearful for his thoughts. Thus he conceals 
his thoughts, when he finds he can, as he 
would his acts if he only could. Indeed, 
acts he would like to do if he only dared, 
he may turn to thoughts and do in imagina- 
tion, and thus conceal. 

Two things are bad about all this : the 
overworking of the imagination, and the 
concealing of it. 

When imagination takes the place of 
reality, the usual checks and safeguards 
are not there, and the mind may revel in 
its unrestricted desires, leading to a patho- 
logical excess. Real acts in actual relation 

140 



PREVENTION 

to other objective realities usually can never 
be carried to such excess as to be patho- 
logical, provided they are not inherently 
harmful. But imagination is such a subtle 
thing, and so unobtrusive socially, that 
it may be indulged in to excess for a long 
while without causing any comment. 

This is especially bad for the child, 
because it interferes with the normal func- 
tioning of his higher faculties and prevents 
educational and natural development. 

But worse than this is the dissociation 
concealment tends to develop into. Con- 
cealment, at first conscious, kept up long 
enough, becomes unconscious, finally, and 
automatic. This is another and very real 
injury to the tender nervous and mental 
mechanisms of the child. Once dissocia- 
tion sets in, it is very like a crack starting 
in thin glass; it tends to go on till there 
is a bad break. 

Childhood is the time to notice all such 
beginnings of pathological processes, because 
141 



NERVOUSNESS 

then the trouble may be taken in time and 
prevented from developing into anything 
dangerous. But obviously, to notice the 
beginning of such subtle trouble it is 
necessary to know what the difficulty really 
consists in. Hence the necessity for parents 
to instruct themselves in the fundamentals 
of nervous and mental development. 

A wise mother once observed the begin- 
ning of a dissociation in her little daughter, 
and by finding out, through analysis of her 
child's dreams, what the complex consisted 
in, was able to reassociate the disconnected 
mental strands, and thus head off a possible 
future psychoneurosis. 

The child, a little girl of about eight, 
cried a good deal, and did not wish to go 
to school. Her mother had to go with her 
to get her to go at all. Then she had to 
go again in about an hour to see if she 
were; all right, or otherwise she would have 
come home. 

Through the analysis of a dream, the 
142 



PREVENTION 

mother discovered that her daughter was 
repressing a secret another little girl at 
school had told her, and that the mental 
burden of the developing complex was more 
than she could bear untroubled. The child 
did not know this, and if she had been asked 
what it was that troubled her, would not 
have known. Indeed she had been asked 
and did not know. But as soon as her 
mother found out what the trouble really 
was, and they had talked it over together, 
the child became perfectly all right at once, 
and has remained so for nearly five years. 

If this complex had been permitted to 
develop, it is almost certain that later the 
child would have suffered from some much 
more severe form of psychoneurotic dis- 
turbance. 

Next to infancy perhaps the most danger- 
ous period in personal development is at 
the age of maturing. At this age the child 
feels more than ever his growing power, but 
lacking experience and the wide vision that 
143 



NERVOUSNESS 

gives, he has nothing but his imagination 
to rely on to provide him with a purpose 
that seems to him adequate to his powers. 
But the feeling of power and the possession 
of power are two different things, and the 
difficulties of overcoming the world of 
resistance may be so much greater than the 
power that the individual has, that again 
he turns inward, and in dreams, instead of 
in reality, seeks his soul's desire. 

This is indeed another dangerous time, 
and unless the very sensitive child is care- 
fully guided, he may sink into actual 
mental disorganization. 

Again, the thing to do is to get the content 
of the child's mind and help him in the 
delicate process of nervous, mental, and 
social organization. For all these aspects 
of the individual person are interwoven, 
and all of them have to be taken into con- 
sideration in the matter of personal integrity 
and health. 

A little girl on entering into womanhood 
144 



PREVENTION 

showed nervous symptoms which might 
easily have been understood if any thought 
had been given to them, and with proper 
treatment she might have escaped a nervous 
breakdown which only came when she was 
thirty years old. 

A man who broke down nervously when 
he was about forty-five, whose symptoms 
took the form of phobias, showed difficulty 
in getting organized and growing evenly, 
so to speak, as he approached manhood. 
If his parents only had known the great 
significance for their son's future of those 
early nervous and personal symptoms, and 
had known what to do, they could, most 
probably, have helped him to avoid what 
otherwise was inevitable. 

In both these instances proper parental 
care could have prevented later nervous 
breakdowns in the children. But, unfor- 
tunately, as is usually the case, the parents 
themselves needed training and instruction, 
before they could have been competent 
145 



NERVOUSNESS 

to do anything adequate for their children 
in the way of prevention of future nervous 
disaster. 

The reason parents have to be so circum- 
spect and wise is that children begin their 
social life according to their original atti- 
tudes towards their parents. Their atti- 
tude towards their parents is largely but a 
reflection of the parents' attitude towards 
them and to society in general. Thus it is 
that so often children do what their parents 
teach by their lives, not by their words, and 
the children's attitude to society is really 
the parents' attitude, only the parents may 
have enough worldly wisdom to avoid open 
social conflict, or enough original personal 
strength to escape a nervous breakdown. 

What I mean is illustrated by the follow- 
ing story of a nervous breakdown, the 
beginning of which was traced to the atti- 
tude the child took to her parents. 

At about the age of twelve or thirteen this 
young girl took a violent dislike to her 
146 



PREVENTION 

parents, for more or less adequate reasons, 
and from that time became quite rebellious 
and absolutely unamenable. Having lost 
her love, she became disobedient and head- 
strong. She graduated from high school 
with honors and after a brilliant career at 
normal school became a very successful 
teacher. To get away from parents and 
home, she secured a position to teach in a 
Middle Western town, where she continued 
her success in teaching. 

Because she had hardened her heart 
toward her parents and to the affections in 
general, it took a very primitive type of 
man to get her to think she cared enough 
about him to marry him. Soon after 
marriage her husband began to abuse her, 
then he took to drink, and life became too 
hard for her to bear. She became hysterical 
and dreamed of dying, the only way to 
escape she could imagine. 

The immediate cause of her nervous 
breakdown was the hardships of her married 
147 



NERVOUSNESS 

life. But the reason she chose to marry the 
type of man she did dated back to the time 
when she lost her love for her parents, and 
began a systematic process of self -repression. 
Her husband broke through this repression, 
but the situation then became more than 
she could manage, with the wisdom she 
had at her command, and so she failed. 

Once such a process as this starts, it seems 
as if it must run its inevitable course 
to its appointed end. But it need not 
necessarily have been so, if the parents had 
only known what to do when it began. If 
they had gained their child's confidence, 
when they first noticed her changed atti- 
tude, they could have prevented the pro- 
cess of repression from developing to any 
dangerous extent, and all the consequent 
misery of their child's life might have been 
avoided. 

As this chapter is on prevention, I have 
spoken only of that aspect of the matter in 
considering this case, but it is important 
148 



PREVENTION 

to notice, also, that such processes as those 
involved here may be stopped at almost 
any time, provided the environment is not 
absolutely unamenable, if the patient can 
learn, even at a late date, the nature of the 
personal elements involved and the laws 
of their action and reaction. In this par- 
ticular instance, such was the case, and 
recovery followed rapidly on understanding 
and insight. 

I am aware of the fact that this doctrine 
is no easy proposition for parents. On the 
contrary, it is very hard even approximately 
to fulfill its demands. But it makes life 
easier in the long run, because it is almost 
always easier to prevent accidents than it 
is to repair broken nervous systems, even 
though the break may be regarded as 
functional. 

The problem of prevention thus becomes 
a problem for parents. Therefore, it fol- 
lows that the fundamental decision of 
parents is taken when they choose each other 
149 



NERVOUSNESS 

for marriage. On the choice of a life part- 
ner, then, will depend to a certain degree 
at least the personal future of possible 
children. 

Anything so complex as the motives on 
which such a choice must be made cannot 
possibly be wholly analyzed into conscious 
purposes; and possibly it is better, on the 
whole, that the final decision is really based 
on instinct, and not on consciousness. 

But even if this is usually the case, it 
would probably be much better both for 
the lovers themselves and their possible 
children, if they should marry, if they knew 
a little more about some of the more or less 
unconscious motives that influence them 
in their final choice. 

The fundamental laws are simple. The 
boy tends to marry the type of girl that 
seems to him most like his mother; and 
the girl tends to marry the type of man 
most like her father. The reasons are 
equally simple. The first woman the boy 
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PREVENTION 

loves is usually his mother; and the first 
man the girl loves is usually her father. 
Therefore, the love of the child for the 
parents becomes the prototype of all love. 

But while the fundamental laws are 
simple, their practical application to con- 
crete cases is tremendously complicated. 
Without going into the complications, how- 
ever, the most important thing to notice 
is that what the boy and girl really love in 
the parents is their fundamental psychic 
quality, or spirituality. Of course physical 
qualities have their influence, but what is 
behind that and gives it moving force and 
life is the psychic character or total per- 
sonality. 

This it is that children love, or hate, as 
the case may be; and this is the hidden, 
mysterious something which the boy sees 
in his beloved, and loves, — the spirit of his 
mother ; and the girl sees in her lover, — 
the spirit of her father. Sometimes all this 
is quite plain, but more often it is obscured 
151 



NERVOUSNESS 

by unessential details, and marriages are 
made from hidden motives. 

The danger is that weaknesses may thus 
become unconsciously perpetuated and ex- 
aggerated. Thus the child suffers, not 
necessarily from the sins, but from the 
unconscious mistakes of the parents. 

Now present parents must, of course, 
stand by their mistakes, if they have made 
any, but if they can learn from their mis- 
takes, they may, perhaps, save their children 
from making the same mistakes all over 
again. 

The way parents can help to save their 
children from making the same mistakes 
they may have possibly made themselves, 
is by analyzing themselves and understand- 
ing the hidden motives that have uncon- 
sciously led them into much of their 
trouble. Then they will see the same 
unconscious tendencies cropping out in their 
children. If they are conscious of the 
presence of these tendencies, they can 



PREVENTION 

handle them to much better purpose than 
if they merely react unconsciously to them, 
be they good or bad in themselves. 

For instance, if the parents of the girl 
whose career I have just recounted had had 
much self-knowledge, they would have 
recognized that one of their deepest tend- 
encies was to conceal their real thoughts, 
was to hide, even from themselves, past 
acts of which they were ashamed; and 
looking to see it crop out in their child, and 
gently overcoming it with loving wisdom, 
would have prevented the starting, or at 
least the going very far, of the process that 
proved finally to be so disastrous. 

Personality is highly complex, perhaps 
it is the most complex thing in existence, 
next to society, which is made up of many 
personalities. Now the child loves as a 
whole, or hates as a whole, and when the 
time comes for it to generalize its love and 
give it to persons outside its own family, 
an individual with one or a few traits like 
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NERVOUSNESS 

the parent is taken for the parent, as a 
whole, although there may be but a super- 
ficial resemblance. 

This superficial resemblance, however, 
may be the key that unlocks the uncon- 
scious and more or less repressed love for 
the parent, and thus the beloved becomes 
invested with the rest of the qualities of 
the parent, in imagination, although in 
fact there may be little or no reason for 
such wholesale idealization. 

After marriage comes the awakening. 
Husband and wife no longer seem like 
father and mother, and this may be the 
beginning of much marital misery. 

A great deal of this misery might be 
avoided — at least its intensity might be 
so much reduced as to make it possible to 
avoid a nervous or mental break — if 
people knew that one of the hidden reasons 
of their mutual love was the unconscious 
identification of the beloved with the parent 
due to some real but perhaps unnoticed 
154 



PREVENTION 

superficial resemblance, which, of course, 
need not necessarily imply any further 
resemblance at all. 

If people knew this in more detail they 
might analyze a little more carefully than 
they usually do their feelings for one 
another, and thus avoid believing them- 
selves in love with a real person when what 
they really love is that person's resemblance 
to one of their parents. 

But there is a reverse side to this, which, 
if unnoted and unheeded, may lead to even 
greater possible tragedy. If, for any reason, 
the parents achieve the hate of their chil- 
dren, or even dislike, the latter then try to 
marry the exact opposite, if they can find 
such, of the parents they dislike. 

Again, the thing they may dislike in a 
parent may be but a single quality which 
usually carries with it many other unusually 
good qualities. Thus in trying to avoid 
the evil they do not know, but rather feel, 
they fall into even greater evils than they 
155 



NERVOUSNESS 

can bear, and then comes the nervous or 
mental break. 

A young English girl felt that her mother 
had married beneath her. She said her 
mother's family were almost in the aris- 
tocracy, but her father was only a master 
mechanic. So when the time came for 
her to marry, she chose a man whom she 
thought to be much superior to her father. 
But almost immediately after marriage she 
found that her husband was neurotic, and 
in some ways almost degenerate, and she 
found herself carrying a burden almost 
more than she could bear. Finally, her 
burden did become quite unendurable and 
she suffered from a nervous breakdown. 

All this might have been prevented if the 
patient had had a proper philosophy of life, 
and the time to get a true philosophy of life 
is in childhood from the parents. Quite 
obviously, this child's mother had told her 
daughter often how much superior her 
family was to her father's and the instruc- 
156 



PREVENTION 

tion had had its effect, but not what the 
mother had probably hoped. If the mother 
had known in what respects her family had 
been better, and in what respect the father's 
family was better, she might have taught 
her daughter to discriminate, and so have 
helped her to know a really good man when 
she saw one. 



157 



Chapter VIII 
Vision: Religion; Philosophy; Morality 

IN our search for causes and methods of 
prevention of nervous disturbances 
we have had to turn to the past. We 
have found that the trouble was personal; 
partly, perhaps, inherited, but largely due 
to poor parental training. Why were the 
parents to blame? They had a poor in- 
heritance, perhaps, and their parents were 
ignorant, too, and unwise. Why? 

We do not know. If we try to force our 
minds to think out to the very end the sorry 
story of the origin of evil, we find in the 
last analysis we are balked ; and we stand, 
resentful or resigned, before the bitter facts. 
f Religion, then, perhaps, steps in to help 
us bear our heavy burden. Now what 
158 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

can religion do either to help or to prevent 
nervous disturbances ? 

Well, religion helps us to bear the facts 
of life, evil though they may be, by teaching 
us to be resigned to realities. Disease 
steps in when we deny the reality of evil, 
or give up and try to live in a world of un- 
reality and phantasy. Now if we have 
already slipped into an attitude that im- 
plies a mental dissociation from reality, 
religion may teach us that reality must be 
borne for the sake of helping God win 
against the forces of the Prince of Darkness. 
Whereupon we pull ourselves together and 
clear our minds, and see if we cannot meet 
the problems of life face to face. 

In this attitude of spiritual courage, 
nervous and mental disturbances may some- 
times completely disappear. The reason 
is this: The psychic energy that has been 
wasted in mere dreams and phantasies is 
now turned to better account, and is used 
in fighting the devil and all his devices. 
159 



NERVOUSNESS 

There may be all kinds of mistakes made, 
aesthetic, logical, and even moral, but the 
essential act has been done — the trans- 
forming of personal energy into works of 
some sort, no matter what, and a soul has 
been saved. 

This is the meaning of the following 
words by Doctor Putnam, who says splen- 
didly just what I have in mind : 

"Every effort has in it something of 
reason, something of feeling, and something 
of will. And the more we introduce reason 
into this mixture, the less important, rel- 
atively speaking, becomes the part played 
by emotion, until, as the final outcome, the 
emotion itself becomes an element in the 
furtherance of rational effort. In a similar 
fashion it is found that temptation may be 
converted into power, and the intolerable 
distress due to repressed emotions into a 
willingness to take one's share of the world's 
troubles." * 

1 J. J. Putnam, "Human Motives ", p. 172. 
160 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

This is the true meaning of religious resig- 
nation to reality, of facing facts, "a willing- 
ness to take one's share of the world's 
troubles" and then try to do what one can 
to alleviate them. 

Religion offers to some minds their only 
adequate object of love. Life has failed 
them : God will not fail. When they think 
that God has failed, and that the whole 
world is wicked, they lose the only reason 
they had for loving, and they break down 
under the nervous strain. But if they can 
regain their love for God, and reconcile their 
troubles with His care for them, they are 
saved, and life again holds reasons for their 
living. 

What then is the essence of religion that 
it has such wonderful power over the lives 
of men ? How can it cure the sick and pre- 
vent the well from falling ill? It cannot 
always do these things, as we know, but 
how is it that it ever does them ? 

Religion accomplishes its results through 
161 



NERVOUSNESS 

love. Religion is the highest form of the 
expression of love that human beings are 
capable of creating. It is the idealiza- 
tion of the family. Thus religion recreates 
through idealizing the family and family 
relations. 

The development of this ideal is most 
beautifully shown by Doctor White. He 
says : 

f "The Holy Family is symbolic of the 
family group, as the infant first learned to 
know it, and in which he found complete 
satisfaction for his love and complete secur- 
ity, his father the greatest and most power- 
ful of men, his mother the sweetest and most 
beautiful of women." * 

Now love is dynamic and powerful, and 
if it has an adequate object it leads to life 
and health and progress. But if it does 
not have an adequate object, but is turned 
back on itself, it leads to illness, degenera- 

1 W. A. White, " Mechanisms of Character Formation ", p. 
224. 

162 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

tion, and death. This is not figuratively 
but literally true. And that is why re- 
ligion is such a power to save souls ; it pro- 
vides an adequate object of love. 

This is shown in the success of the Em- 
manuel Movement. Doctor Worcester 
writes : 

"It is not long ago that religion was re- 
garded as a predisposing cause of melan- 
cholia, hysteria, and insanity (Maudsley), 
but to-day we know that the type of char- 
acter created by Christ, calm, loving, 
patient, unselfish, fearless, trusting, is the 
type best able to resist every form of nerv- 
ous disease and moral evil (Schofield). 
Therefore it is that we offer this religion 
to those who seek our aid, seldom without 
success. In fact the willingness of even 
worldly-minded and apparently irreligious 
men and women to accept the character 
and teachings of Christ and to live by them 
has been one of the happiest experiences 
we have been permitted to enjoy. Again 
163 



NERVOUSNESS 

and again have I heard a man who had not 
thought seriously of religion for years ex- 
claim, 'I don't know whether I am going 
to recover my health, and the curious thing 
is I don't care now nearly as much as I did. 
But if I live I am going to be a better man 
than I have been in the past.' As a matter 
of fact we possess in our religion the greatest 
of all therapeutic agents, if only we deal 
with it sincerely." 

And Doctor Worcester quotes from a 
letter from a patient who sought his aid on 
account of insomnia and the use of alcohol 
and morphia : 

"'I am astonished at the power which is 
doing this recreating for me, because I am 
perfectly conscious that it is in no wise my 
will. You most certainly set free some po- 
tent imprisoned spring of action. I feel 
no struggle, only a simple process of ac- 
complishment.' " * 

We all know what a powerful agent reli- 

1 Elwood Worcester, "Religion and Medicine", pp. 58-59. 
164 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

gion is in the moral world, but it is only just 
beginning to be realized what a power it 
has over sickness. 

Now, as I said, the source of the power 
of religion is in the family. The ideal 
family is the ideal of religion, which tries 
to regard all mankind as one great family. 
And in the best family one sees the highest 
possible realization of love. And love is 
the most unifying attitude of emotion, 
thought, and will possible to the human 
being. 

We have seen what personal sickness 
consists in — dissociation of the personality. 
Therefore, personal health consists in as- 
sociation, or unity. That is why love heals. 
Love unifies. 

This is strictly, scientifically, psychologi- 
cally true. The essence of functional nerv- 
ous disorders is personal disorganization. 
Let me quote the definition of hysteria, by 
Janet, one of the greatest of modern stu- 
dents of psychoneurotic disorders: 
16$ 



NERVOUSNESS 

"Hysteria is a form of mental depression 
characterized by the retraction of the field 
of personal consciousness and a tendency 
to the dissociation and emancipation of the 
systems of ideas and functions that con- 
stitute personality." * 

This is a clear, scientific statement of 
just what I have been saying. "The re- 
traction of the field of personal conscious- 
ness" means a narrowing of the personal 
self, thus separating itself from others, 
which is the exact opposite of love, which 
seeks to expand itself and get into the best 
relations possible with others. And "the 
dissociation and emancipation of the sys- 
tems of ideas and functions that constitute 
personality" means just what it says, a 
breaking up of personal unity into smaller 
and smaller groups, until, at last, it is hard 
to see any personal quality left at all. 

Now we see, more clearly than ever, why 
religion may sometimes heal the sick. The 

1 Pierre Janet, "The Major Symptom of Hysteria", p. 332. 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

sort of sickness religion sometimes heals 
is functional nervous disorders; the way 
it accomplishes its results is through pro- 
viding an adequate object, and through the 
unifying power of love. And the kind of 
love it teaches, at its best, is ideal. 
i It is also clearer, now, how religion can 
prevent functional neurotic disorders. The 
truly religious family takes better care of 
the children than the non-religious usually 
does, though of course there are exceptions, 
and as we have already seen the time to 
prevent nervous disorders getting a start 
and developing is in childhood. 
f But there are certain persons who are 
not naturally religious. Some of these 
people are more narrowly intellectual and 
thoughtful, and think if they cannot see 
the logical reasons for religious prohibitions, 
they can do more nearly as they please 
and "get away with it." Such persons 
are usually highly repressed, and though 
they think they are acting from conscious, 
167 



NERVOUSNESS 

logical reasons, they really are acting in- 
stinctively and unconsciously, and often 
get into nervous difficulty without in the 
least knowing how or why. 

To reach the understanding of such suf- 
ferers at all, the most highly refined phil- 
osophical and psychological analysis is nec- 
essary. 

A patient of this class said that at times 
he felt as if he would "Curse God and then 
die." A woman who believed there was 
no God suffered the tortures of the damned. 
Another woman, who suffered terribly from 
her nervous condition, got into such a con- 
dition of mind that she believed there was 
neither a God in Heaven nor an honorable 
man on earth. A man who strove to think 
philosophically and logically felt as if his 
thoughts were blasphemous and obscene, 
and that he must be on the verge of in- 
sanity. 

In all these cases a new philosophy of 
life had to be gained. Granting their 
168 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

premises, they all reasoned logically. But 
their fundamental difficulty lay in a too 
narrow conception of the grounds on which 
they based their reasonings. Two things 
had to be accomplished, therefore, before 
they got any relief: A widening of con- 
sciousness, or vision; and a more nearly 
adequate philosophical, or logical, system 
capable of expressing their increased in- 
sight. 

If we turn back for a moment to Janet's 
definition of hysteria we see that his de- 
scription of the hysterical state of mind as 
a "retraction of the field of personal con- 
sciousness" pictures a condition which re- 
quires, for relief, an enlarged, or more phil- 
osophic vision. 

Philosophy enlarges the field of personal 
consciousness . ' ' Philosophy ' ' , says William 
James, one of the greatest of our American 
philosophers, "is at once the most sublime 
and the most trivial of human pursuits. 
It works in the minutest crannies, and it 
169 



NERVOUSNESS 

opens out the widest vistas. It 'bakes no 
bread', as has been said, but it can inspire 
our souls with courage; and repugnant as 
its manners, its doubting and challenging, 
its quibbling and dialectics often are to 
common people, no one of us can get along 
without the far-flashing beams of light it 
sends over the world's perspectives." 1 

Now it may seem absurd to link together 
two such apparently disparate things as 
philosophy and nervous disorder. But an 
actual case will make the relation clearer, 
the already mentioned case of the young 
woman who suffered from an obsessive fear 
of doing injury to other people by giving 
them money which she had infected in some 
way. 

A basis for this feeling lay in the fact that 
she had been hurting herself ever since she 
was a child by an unconscious fixation on 
infantile attitudes and acts. This infantile 
fixation prevented her personal growth 

1 William James, "Pragmatism", p. 60. 
170 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

and social development, and the tendency 
she had to hurt herself, through constric- 
tion, so to speak, she simply projected on 
to others. 

Two steps were necessary for her to take 
to get improvement : She had to see ex- 
actly what the fixation process consisted 
in and turn away from it ; and she had to 
get a new philosophy of life, which implied 
an actual interest in others and a desire 
to understand and help them, rather than 
merely to use them in her own intimate 
interests. 

As a result of both these steps being 
taken, she rapidly gained more and more 
control of herself, and her obsession began 
to disappear. As she got a deeper and 
wider insight and vision into the relations 
of the individual to society, to the world, 
and to the universe, she approached more 
and more nearly to a complete and per- 
manent recovery. 

In this case, then, it is possible to see an 
171 



NERVOUSNESS 

actual therapeutic effect following, pari 
passu, the widening of the mental vista 
and the inspiring of the soul with courage, 
due to philosophy. 

Philosophy, like religion, gives some per- 
sons an adequate object of adoration and 
devotion. The philosopher loves truth. 
But in the love of truth, as in the love 
of God, the essential thing is the love. 
Here, as in religion, love is the unifying 
element. 

There are those who say that God and 
truth are the same thing : God is truth and 
truth is God. But such persons also say 
God is love and love is God. This seems 
illogical. I think the meaning is psycho- 
logical : Both God and Truth have be- 
come symbols, and what these people are 
trying to do is to emphasize the supreme 
importance of love, because of its unifying 
power. 

But if unity and wholeness is the great 
thing we need and desire, neither religion 

172 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

nor philosophy can always give it to us" 
completely. God certainly seems subject 
to the power of evil, to a certain extent at 
least, and we have to postulate a devil to 
account for it. And if truth is the object 
of philosophy, it is never completely gained ; 
and we have to allow that error is possible, 
because error certainly exists. This is why 
a certain amount of conscious courage is 
necessary ; we have to be able to bear evil 
and error and still go on, endeavoring, so 
far as we can, to transform evil into good, 
and error into truth. 

When I said above that love was the 
essential thing, I meant it in the sense that 
the feeling, or the emotion of love, was the 
immediate personal experience of the uni- 
fied soul. From another point of view, the 
religion or the philosophy is the essential 
thing, inasmuch as it is the thing that unifies 
the soul, so to speak, into love. 

For love is highly complex, made of many 
elements, and until these elements are 
173 



NERVOUSNESS 

harmonized and organized into unity, there 
is no love, and where there is no love there 
is a sick person. 

Now love is essentially an idealized social 
relation, and nervous disorders tend to 
step in when a person takes anything less 
than such a whole-souled attitude to other 
persons. In so far as such a less-than- 
whole-souled attitude and its accompany- 
ing processes are conscious, there is im- 
morality ; but in so far as it is unconscious, 
nervous symptoms are apt to manifest 
themselves. 

Thus it comes about that both religion 
and philosophy must be tested by the 
standards of morality, because there are 
good and bad religions and true and false 
philosophies, and truth itself is but one 
species of good. 

"Truth is one species of good, and not, as 
is usually supposed, a category distinct 
from good, and coordinate with it. The 
true is the name of whatever proves itself to 

174 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

be good in the way of belief, and good, too, 
for definite, assignable reasons." 1 Thus 
both religion and philosophy must be 
measured by the standards of morality. 

Now the ultimate standard of moral 
goodness is social. "Each person must be 
conceived as tied in with all his fellows. . . . 
If we try for a moment to conceive a person 
as single and detached, we should find he 
would have no powers to exercise. No 
emotions would be his, whether of love or 
hate, for they imply objects to arouse them ; 
no occupations of civilized life, for these 
imply mutual dependency. From speech 
he would be cut off, if there were nobody 
to speak to; nor would any such instru- 
ment as language be ready for his use, if 
ancestors had not cooperated in its con- 
struction. His very thoughts would become 
a meaningless series of impressions if they 
indicated no reality besides themselves. 
So empty would be that fiction, the single 

1 William James, "Pragmatism", p. 76. 
175 



NERVOUSNESS 

and isolated individual. The real creature, 
rational and conjunct man, is he who stands 
in living relationship with his fellows, they 
being a veritable part of him and he of 
them. Man is essentially a social being, 
not a being who happens to be living in 
society. Society enters into his inmost 
fiber, and apart from society he is not. 
Yet this does not mean that society, any 
more than the individual, has an inde- 
pendent existence, prior, complete, and 
authoritative. What would society be, 
parted from the individuals who compose 
it? No more than an individual who does 
not embody social relationships. The two 
are mutual conceptions, different aspects 
of the same thing. We may view a per- 
son abstractly, fixing attention on his single 
center of consciousness; or we may view 
him conjunctly, attending to his multi- 
farious ties." l 

1 George Herbert Palmer, "The Nature of Goodness'*, pp. 
170-171. 

176 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

Thus goodness must be social. The 
description Palmer gives of "the single and 
isolated individual" is a good description 
of a certain form of insanity. Thus in any 
person with a predisposition to withdraw 
from society, a false philosophy of life may 
result, not only in banal mistakes, but also 
in actual insanity. 

Palmer is speaking of the person of full 
consciousness, contrasting selfishness with 
self-sacrifice, but even so he sees that one 
who shrinks from social life and its neces- 
sary sacrifices is on the road to insanity. 
Speaking of the one who does make the 
necessary sacrifice he says, "And such a 
man, so far from being mad, is wise as few 
of us are. Glorious indeed is the self- 
sacrificer, because he is so sane, because in 
him all pettiness and detachment are swept 
away. He appears mad only to those who 
stand at the opposite point of view, but in 
his eyes it is they who are ridiculous. In 
fact, each must be counted crazy or wise, 
177 



NERVOUSNESS 

according to the view we take of what con- 
stitutes the real person." l 

A woman who had no sisters and whose 
father, mother, and only brother were dead, 
had the belief that love, in a narrowly per- 
sonal and limited sense of immediate emo- 
tional experience, was the thing to be sought 
after with all the powers of her being. She 
felt herself unable to respond to religious 
love in any broadly social way and turned, 
in her imagination, to her memory of her 
mother and sought deeper and more un- 
conscious communication with her. The re- 
sult of this wish was that she finally thought 
her mother really talked with her as if she 
were alive, and she became so dependent 
on her that she would not do anything un- 
less she thought her mother definitely told 
her to do it. She gave up her work and took 
to her bed. 

Now if all this had been under conscious 

1 George Herbert Palmer, " The Nature of Goodness ", pp. 
171-172. 

.178 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

control, she would have been open to moral 
criticism, obviously; but inasmuch as it 
was an unconscious development of a mis- 
taken moral belief, she could only be re- 
garded as mentally sick. 

Her recovery came almost at once when 
she entered into real social relations and 
gave up, or lost, rather, her insane relation 
with her mother, and substituted for it 
personally adequate and real social rela- 
tions. Thus growing in her "conjunct" 
social relations, she escaped sinking into a 
state of individual isolation which, strictly 
speaking, is the essence of insanity, even in 
a technical sense. 

The belief that love, in a narrowly emo- 
tional sense, was to be sought with all 
strength was a false belief. A true belief 
does not deny the emotional value of love 
but adds to that the necessity of the social 
value of service and objective expression, 
if the person who holds the belief is to con- 
tinue sane. Not all beliefs, of course, have 
179 



NERVOUSNESS 

such momentous consequences, but con- 
sequences of some sort they necessarily 
have, and by their consequences must 
beliefs be deemed as true or false. Conse- 
quences, then, be they what they may, to 
be satisfactory at all must be moral; and 
to be supremely satisfactory must be su- 
premely moral — this means social, in the 
highest sense. 

Now morality is only possible where 
there is self -consciousness. Social conscious- 
ness develops out of self -consciousness ; 
self -consciousness develops out of conscious- 
ness, and consciousness out of unconscious- 
ness. 

Further, the person suffering from func- 
tional disturbances is essentially social, 
although usually he does not know it. And 
his ignorance extends to the causes of his ill- 
ness. These causes are the hidden, uncon- 
scious trends and tendencies, which he in- 
stinctively tries to conceal and so represses, 
because they interfere with his social ideals 
180 



VISION: RELIGION; MORALITY 

and standards. This repression is in itself 
essentially a moral act — it is the best thing 
he knows how to do under the circum- 
stances, so far as he is aware of them. But 
there is a better way, which he can learn, 
and that consists in becoming conscious, 
to the fullest extent of his ability, of all his 
instinctive impulses; and then, instead 
of repressing them and refusing even to 
acknowledge them as his own, to transform 
them into higher social forms, also to the 
fullest extent of his ability. Thus he will 
progressively get better, and still better, 
of his illnesses and pari passu socially im- 
prove indefinitely. 

A man must be conscious of his inner 
conflicts if he is to have any power over 
them, and until he does become conscious 
of himself as harboring unconscious desires 
and conflicting cravings, he is in no position 
to solve his conflicts in any way satisfactory 
to himself or to others. But when he does 
become self-conscious, in a good sense of 
181 



J 



NERVOUSNESS 

the term, and therefore socially conscious, 
because there can be no self separated from 
society, he can decide to what degree, and 
in what proportion, he will devote himself 
to his individual needs and what to social 
needs. 

Under ordinary conditions, these are in- 
stinctive movements of the spirit, and so 
long as there is no serious obstacle, they 
should not be made very conscious. But 
when trouble comes, as is certain to be the 
case, sooner or later, we need then to be 
highly conscious of what it is all about, in 
order to remedy it, if possible, or prevent 
it in the future. 



182 



INDEX 



Alcohol, 4, 91. 
Ambition, 24. 
Analysis, 19, 98, 114, 155. 
Arterio-sclerosis, 3. 
Asthma, 85. 
Attitude, 10. 

Brain disease, 3. 

Bruce, H. Addington, 19, 34. 

Cabot, Dr. Richard, 3, 16. 
Cannon, Dr. Walter, 82. 
Complex, 143. 
Concealment, 26, 140. 
Conflicts, 25, 27, 28, 37, 73, 

74. 
Consciousness, 55 , 63, 97, 

107, 169. 
Convulsions, 103. 
Courage, 116, 159. 
Cruelty, 129, 131. 



Day-dreams, 38, 40. 

Death, 31, 36. 

Delusions, 68, 69, 70, 117, 

119. 
Depression, 18, 108. 
Desire, 12, 25, 110. 
Disgust, 50. 

183 



Dissociation, 61, 141. 

Dreams, 29; as symptoms, 
37 ; created by desire, 32 ; 
protectors of conscious- 
ness, 35. 

Eczema, 19, 94. 
Education, moral, 132. 
Emmanuel Movement, 163. 
Epilepsy, 78 ; equivalent, 
93. 

Failure, 15. 
Fear, 10, 90, 101. 
Fixation, 170. 
Freud, Dr. Sigmund, 32. 
Functional diseases, 9, 10, 
11 ; origin of, 22. 

Hallucinations, 31. 
Hart, Bernhard, 40, 91. 
Headache, 15, 16, 79, 102. 
Heart disease, 3, 83. 
Heredity, 7, 13. 
Hysteria, 22, 166. 



Illusions, 81. 
Imagination, 43. 
Infantilism, 111, 127, 



INDEX 



Insomnia, 18. 
Instinct, 100. 
Introversion, 72, 139. 

James, William, 55, 74, 169. 
Janet, Pierre, 22, 166. 
Judgment, 17. 
Jung, C. G., 135. 

Lee, Dr. Roger I., 3, 4, 5. 

Love, 72; family, 165; re- 
ligious, 162 ; unifying 
power of, 173. 

Loyalty, 66 

Marriage, 20, 150. 
Motive, 17. 

Overwork, 23. 

Palmer, George Herbert, 
176, 178. 

Person, 14 ; definition of, 24. 

Personality, 28, 153; dis- 
eased, 21 ; double, 56. 

Phantasy, 139. 

Philosophy, 169. 

Pleasure — Pain, 107. 

Poison, 3. 

Psychic shock, 18. 

Psychotherapy, 9, 11, 12. 

Punishment, 126, 129, 130. 



Putnam, Dr. James Jackson. 
160. 

Reality, 37; and dreams, 

30. 
Religion, 101. 
Repression, 80, 125, 142, 181. 

Self-protection, 7. 
Self-sacrifice, 177. 
Shyness, 133. 
Social consciousness, 95. 
Stuttering, 86. 
Suicide, 26, 36. 
Symbolism, 89; of desire, 
30. 

Taylor, Dr. Edward W., 

16, 19. 
Temptation, 15, 61, 104. 
Trotter, W., (note), 100. 
Truth, 174. 

Unconsciousness, 25, 52, 
53, 61, 65, 73, 85, 112, 
141, 178. 

White, Dr. Wm. A., 53, 

162. 
Willfulness, 84. 
Worcester, Elwood, 163. 



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